


Together

by booyahkendell



Series: To Build a Home [2]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Adoption, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Family Fluff, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 21:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8683873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booyahkendell/pseuds/booyahkendell
Summary: Rafael and Sonny's life, post-Elisa.





	1. Chapter 1

“Oops!”

Sonny felt the rustle of linen sheet being tugged back over his toes, tucked underneath the space between where his heels were perched precariously on either side of Rafael’s warm calf.

A gentle, tiny pat on the tip of his pinky toe came next.

“There you go, daddy’s feet! All nice and warm!”

Little fingers clutched at the hem of his t-shirt, an elbow was being shoved into a spot that he was quite positive was in the general vicinity of his kidney, and – “Elisa, _what in the world are you doing_?”

“Shh, daddy!”

Her green eyes shown wide, illuminated by the barely-there glow of early morning sunlight as she threw an index finger over her lips, nuzzling even farther into Sonny’s chest until her nose was pressed against his.

“Daddy’s _sleeping_!”

He chuckled, threw a hand over his eyes and rubbed until the neon symbols swimming in his line of sight solidified into the lines and curves of tangible numbers.

 _5:30_.

“ _Elisa_ ,” he groaned. “Do I even want to know why you’re out of bed this early?”

“It’s my big day! Remember?”

Her head moved a fraction of an inch until her lips found the tip of Sonny’s nose in a peck; a warmth, that seemed to arrive only with the gentle affections of his husband and daughter, settled easily behind Sonny’s breastbone, and he sighed as Elisa fit herself underneath the jut of his chin once more.

It always stood to overwhelm him, how perfectly Elisa’s little body fit when she was tucked into him like this.

How, biological differences aside, her arms were just the right length to fully enclose his neck, her nose just tiny enough to fit between collarbone and shoulder on those evenings when she’d insist that she absolutely _was not tired, daddy_ , before sleep would find her eyes and she’d pass out in his lap.

How, all along, it seemed she’d been made perfectly just for them.

For Sonny and Rafael.

She was theirs in the same way that Rafael was his.

Sonny remembers feeling – _still feels_ – like Rafael was made for him, too.

Just like Elisa was made for them.

Just like Elisa was made for them to hold, and to love, to cherish, and to protect; just like Elisa was made for them, Rafael was made for Sonny.

Those green eyes that so often found Sonny’s ready and reassuring gaze from the depths of the courtroom gallery, those large hands that Sonny was so adamant were crafted with the image of the space between his own two shoulder blades in mind, that heart which had pressed into Sonny’s every night since their first night, whose steady rhythm Sonny could pick out among the aimless din of city life, taxi cab horns and all.

One beat, and Sonny would say, _‘That one. That one’s my Rafael’s.’_

For as often as they’d been chest to chest, hearts thudding against bone, against flesh, against each other, _into_ each other; intertwined in more ways than one, more ways than Sonny thought possible, he would know.

Rafael had been made for him.

Rafael’s green to Sonny’s blue, Rafael’s tanned skin to Sonny’s pale, Rafael’s pessimistic tendencies to Sonny’s more idealistic ones.

They were a matching set.

And now, with a little body having shoved herself firmly in between them, separating them, whose soft, warm breath tickled the cotton sleeves of Sonny’s college t-shirt, who made their Sunday’s less about relaxation, and more about crisp, afternoon romps through Central Park, who introduced the name “daddy” into their personal lexicon of nicknames, right alongside “Sonny” and “Rafi”.

They were no longer a matching set.

Now, they were a family.

“’Course I remember, bunny,” he answered, the light tapping of Elisa’s toes against his thigh a steady, memorized rhythm as she struggled not to fidget against the thin sheets.

It _was_ , after all, the sole reason why he’d still been bracketed by Rafael’s strong forearms, nose still buried deep in a patch of tawny chest hair at the current hour, rather than up and already on his second mug of bitter coffee of the day.

He found Elisa’s eyes, - vibrant in their coloring, gentle in their gaze, _so much like Rafael’s_ – and said, “It’s someone’s first day of kindergarten.”

“That’s why I couldn’t sleep!” she exclaimed, dark curls cascading downwards and leaving a curtain to mask the shine of her eyes, little tendrils brushing and tickling at Sonny’s forehead. “I’m too excited to sleep!”

Sonny smiled, pressed his lips firmly to his daughter’s forehead as she managed to somehow snuggle still deeper into his neck.

“You aren’t nervous at all?” he asked.

Elisa’s answer came hushed, muted, the drag of her nose back and forth across his throat an unspoken ‘no’.

Apparently unsatisfied with her own response, however, she quickly added an exclamation of, “Nope!”, the ‘p’ popping against Sonny’s skin with every movement of his daughter’s lips.

“Why?” She pulled back, her eyes finding his even in the dim, amber glow crisscrossing its way throughout the bed. “Are you nervous, daddy?”

“Yeah, I am, a little a bit.”

“But why?”

Elisa’s quizzical expression looked so absolutely Barba-like in that moment that Sonny felt as though he were getting a very real glimpse at what a five-year-old Rafael would’ve looked like, if confused and in search of the answer to the cause of his absolute puzzlement.

Sonny wished that Rafael were awake, turned around, cheek to cheek with Elisa so that he could compare: furrowed brow, narrowed eyes, mouth turned downwards at the corners.

They would line up perfectly; Sonny was sure of it.

“Well,” he began, tangling his long fingers into the fluff of Elisa’s hair, pushing and tucking it back behind the slope of an ear, silently willing it to remain in its place so that he could meet his daughter’s watchful gaze.

“I’m just worried because I want you to have a good day, bunny. I want you to have the _best_ day, actually. And I want you to love your teacher, and I want you to make lots of new friends.”

He sighed, catching Elisa’s cheek with thumb and fingers; it’s shape and warmth captured the entirety of his palm, Elisa’s cheek filling up his hand just as she, herself, had filled up what had been left of his heart.

What had been left, after Rafael.

After Rafael had let Sonny in, had let Sonny stay; after Rafael had held Sonny’s heart, after Rafael had held Sonny, too, had kissed Sonny’s cheek and told him that it was okay, that what they felt for each other was beautiful and _so good_ , not wrong like Sonny’s faith and scriptures had echoed until concrete, as much a tangible part of him as the thick accent that so often mangled his words.

Rafael had taken up so much room.

But then, Elisa had wiggled her way in.

Elisa had wiggled her way into Sonny’s heart, their life, their bed.

Rafael and Elisa.

His whole world.

“You’re my little girl, bunny. I’m always gonna worry about you.”

“Well, you’re silly.”

She jabbed a finger forward, made contact with Sonny’s chest, with his heart: “You don’t have to worry about me because I’m always right here. In your heart.”

Sonny found Elisa’s finger before she’d even finished speaking.

He brought her hand to his lips, gave kisses as small as her fingers to the knobby knuckles rising and falling along the way.

“Yeah, bunny, you’re right. You’re always right there. You and daddy both.”

“Are you always in my heart, too, bunny?”

And there was that welcome warmth again.

The sight of Rafael, eyes heavy-lidded, broad shoulders reaching around to envelop their daughter in his safe hold, and Sonny felt summer all the way down to his toes.

Sonny wanted to kiss him.

So Sonny leaned over, across the pillows, and pressed his lips to Rafael’s.

Sonny pressed his lips to Rafael’s, and breathed, swallowed Rafael’s chuckle and following, “Good morning, love,”, until a little hand came up and pushed his cheek away.

“It’s my turn for kisses, daddy! Move!”

The kiss that Elisa presented Rafael with was just the same as the one that she’d first given Sonny, after her initial climb into the bed and between the comforter and sheets: a light, momentary peck to the very tip of his husband’s nose that spoke of innocent affection in abundance.

“Of course I’m always in your heart! You and daddy share me!”

“Sounds like a perfect compromise to me,” Rafael stated, his hand absently weaving its way into the knotted tendrils of Sonny’s hair, locking and tugging – just enough – his best attempt at somehow bringing Sonny closer to the shelter of his body while Elisa was squirming against him.

And Sonny watched, watched as his husband kissed their daughter’s forehead, firm and strong and sweet, his murmurs of, “I love you, bunny” her anchor to her world just as much as they were to Sonny’s.

Watched as his daughter nuzzled her daddy’s neck and proclaimed, “I love you, too! Now when do I get to get dressed for school?”

The laughter that erupted from Rafael’s chest tore its way into Sonny’s own and settled.

A perfect compromise indeed.

* * *

 

Before Rafael had even inched a toe through the doorway of his daughter’s bedroom, Elisa was ambling quickly away from his side, her sights set solely on the brass handles of the closet lying just across the room from her bed and easel.

“Okay, daddy! I want you to pick out my outfit for school today!”

A twist of a handle followed, and Elisa’s closet doors were flung open to reveal a carefully-coordinated cornucopia of color-organized clothing, each item hanging from the metal rod that Sonny had installed the afternoon following Elisa’s first birthday, after it was deemed that Rafael had purchased _far_ too many items of clothing to any longer fit in the singular dresser which they’d relied on up to that point.

And as for the organization by color?

That had been Elisa’s suggestion, of course.

Because, “I want my closet to match your side of you and daddy’s!”, as she’d proclaimed to Rafael, just three days shy of her fourth birthday.

They’d spent the entirety of a lazy, Sunday afternoon on the project: Rafael, on Elisa’s carpeted bedroom floor, Elisa, standing on tip-toe and pulling an array of sweaters, dresses, and matching cardigans from the deepest depths of her closet, dutifully handing each to Rafael as they moved from the darker shades to the light.

And they’d spent every consecutive Sunday since – laundry day, as it was known in the Barba-Carisi household – carefully inserting Elisa’s clothing from the previous week’s wear back into their rightful positions between plum and lilac hues.

“You want _me_ to pick out your outfit for your very first day of kindergarten? I must be special,” Rafael observed, letting his fingers trail featherlight along the length of a cream-colored cashmere sweater.

“Of course I do! You pick out my outfits for all my big days, remember? Like auntie Amanda’s wedding…”.

“Your christening, all your Easter’s…”, Rafael finished. He turned, watched as Elisa plopped onto her bed and became enveloped by the folds of bunched-up comforter, little feet thrown into the air as she reached and found her velveteen bunny within the mass of purple blankets.

“Is there a certain color you’d prefer?” he asked; he did require, at the very least, that minute detail to go off of in his search.

Elisa tossed her bunny in the air, catching it in between outstretched fingers, a swift peck on its nose following close behind: “Well, what’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

 _Obviously_.

“Oh, yeah, duh! Like daddy’s eyes!”

She knew him far too well.

“I want to wear something blue then,” she stated firmly, rolling onto her stomach to better find Rafael’s own eyes.

Before he could answer, Elisa was turning and twisting once again, wriggling until her back fell flat against the mattress.

He chuckled, flicked a finger past a yellow sundress he’d purchased for his daughter at the peak of the last New York City summer; Elisa possessed the inability to sit still for more than .02 seconds at a time, a trait that appeared to only be amplified by the impending first day of school.

Rafael had no doubt from whom she’d acquired that particular mannerism.

Someone tall and ridiculously lanky, with a pair of sweet dimples and an even sweeter face.

Someone whom Rafael was eternally falling over his feet for every day, as well, but.

That was entirely beside the point.

Finally, his hand found purchase on pale blue fabric, an ivory-lined sleeve poking out and making itself known from in between darker shades of navy and the beginnings of deep plum. He pulled the dress out with a flourish, revealing it to Elisa’s eyes, it’s matching white collar exposed from behind the cardigan it’s form had been hidden by.

Elisa gasped: “It’s perfect!” Her bunny was discarded, tossed aside as she plunged forward from her bed and grabbed at the dress’s sleeve. “Thank you, daddy!”

She smiled warmly, tilting her chin to meet his matching green-eyed gaze.

His daughter.

Those eyes, their shade and sparkle a carbon copy of his.

But that smile, too.

That smile was a copy of Sonny’s.

Innocence, and love, and sweetness, and happiness, and everything good in the world, all wrapped up in a set of cheeks and a smile.

She was Sonny’s in some ways, and his in others.

But put together, she was theirs.

Their daughter.

He bent down until his lips met her hair, a “You’re welcome, bunny” spoken into wild and tangled curls.

“I know! Now, if I wear my white knee socks, will that match?” Elisa asked impatiently, already striding towards the oak dresser sat across from her bed, yanking on the painted white handles of the second drawer.

“Yes, it will,” Rafael answered readily. “Do you know what shoes you want to wear as well?”

“Yes!” Elisa was practically bouncing as she retrieved a bundled-up white ball from the inside of her dresser drawer and tossed it on the carpet beside her; the knee socks in question, it seemed. “I wanna wear my brown sandals that look like little bunnies! Will those match, too?”

“Yes, those will match, too,” Rafael chuckled. “But, you do know you have one more thing to pick out, right?”

Elisa furrowed her brows, little nose crinkled in the same way that it did whenever she was perched at the kitchen table, trays of paint and a stack of construction paper set before her as she created pictures which always, without fail, ended up tacked to the living room wall.

He bent down to her level, taking care not to place a knee on the still-discarded socks.

“My tie,” Rafael supplied. “I have to wear a tie picked out by my daughter on such a big day.”

“But I normally only pick out your ties for _your_ big days. Like when you took daddy on that big date ‘cause you were married for six years, and you told me I had to keep it a secret! And I didn’t even tell daddy once, do you remember that!?”

“Yes, you were a very good secret keeper, bunny,” he laughed, pressing a warm kiss to Elisa’s cheekbone. “And your first day of kindergarten is a very big day for me as well. Do you know how many people I’m going to be showing your first day of school pictures off to later?”

She dipped her head, grabbed Rafael’s long index finger in a singular hand. “How many?” she asked shyly.

“ _So many_ ,” he grabbed her face, tiny, pink cheeks framed by larger, tan palms. “Auntie Liv, auntie Amanda – “.

“You’ll show them to auntie Elana, too, right!?” Elisa exclaimed.

“Of course.”

Rafael’s ass would be handed to him twice over if he weren’t to immediately text pictures of her goddaughter, backpack, lunch box, and all, to the honorable and proud, judge Elana Barth.

He pressed one more kiss, this time to Elisa’s forehead, before standing upright and moving towards her bedroom door.

“Go ahead and get dressed and then you can come to daddy and I’s room to help me. Okay?”

Elisa nodded giddily, already plopping herself down to the floor and peeling off the pair of mint green socks she’d worn to bed the night before.

“Okay, daddy! I love you!”

That smile; it was all Sonny.

So happy and sweet.

“I love you, too.”

Rafael turned and shut Elisa’s bedroom door with a light ‘ _click’_.

* * *

 

Warm hands found Sonny’s belly, then sides, a chuckle sipped into the helpings of cream and sugar necessary for him to stomach his morning coffee as lips softly met the cool skin just behind his ear.

He set the ceramic mug down on the countertop, side-by-side to the one already full and waiting for Rafael’s empty hands.

It’d been their shared morning routine for the better portion of the last five years: Rafael aided Elisa in the task of getting dressed, Sonny made coffee.

Rafael showered; Sonny made pancakes, or toasted bagels on particularly hurried mornings, insuring that Elisa was well and fed before the arrival of her nanny signaled Rafael and Sonny’s own impending goodbyes.

Sonny turned, away from their fancy coffee maker and the discarded packets of Splenda, and let his fingers find purchase on Rafael’s cheeks.

He pulled, just enough, until their chests and lips met and Rafael’s arms had wound themselves back around his waist, and Sonny felt warm.

Warm in his husband’s hold, warm as Rafael trailed kisses from the upturned corner of his mouth to along the slope of his cheek, warm as the long fingers on his back spread, covering him, holding him tight.

“Mmm,” Sonny hummed, rubbing their noses together until Rafael gave pause in his path, allowing their foreheads to rest against one another in a display of momentary stillness. “Did you help Elisa pick out her outfit?”

“No, I was actually given free reign to pick out the outfit all on my own. It was quite the honor, I might add.”

“Oh, is that so? You must be pretty special,” Sonny whispered.

Rafael cocked his head to the side, a gesture Sonny normally only witnessed from the back, from his weekly perch in the courtroom gallery as Rafael twisted whatever seemingly innocuous detail that a defendant had let slip into something that he could use in his and the SVU’s favor.

It was so familiar, so _cute_ of a little quirk, that Sonny immediately found himself nuzzling his nose into the spot where Rafael’s strong shoulder met his neck as he answered through a press of lips to Sonny’s temple.

“Well, she’s picking out my tie for the day, so who’s really the special one here?”

He smiled against Rafael’s skin: “You’re such a good dad, you know that?”

“I try to be,” Rafael answered, fingers tightening against the fabric of the button-up that Sonny had hastily thrown on before completing the task of preparing their morning coffee.

“Yeah, well you are,” Sonny shot back. “No ‘try’ about it.”

He needed to be looking at Rafael for this; he dislodged himself from Rafael’s collarbone, searched until their eyes were locked and Sonny was close enough to see the dusting of freckles scattered along Rafael’s nose.

“You’re a good dad – no, a _great_ dad, and a great husband, and – “.

“Daddy, I picked out your tie!”

They turned, and there she was: pale blue dress, white socks pulled up to right below a pair of bony knees, brown flats (thankfully on the correct feet), and one of Rafael’s ties clutched in an outstretched hand.

She bounded towards them, ran face-first into Sonny’s leg and threw an arm around a slacks-covered thigh, the other still proudly presenting the striped tie in between her fingers.

“See! It had dark blue stripes like daddy’s pants and little blue stripes like my dress.”

Rafael reached down, pulled the tie from Elisa’s firm grip and brought it to his eyes, the light from the ceiling fixture bouncing off of the shiny, silk fabric.

“Hmm,” he twisted the tie back and forth, eyes glinting even through slits as he continued his inspection of the tie at its opposite end, gaze ultimately falling on and following Elisa’s as Sonny gathered her up and slung her across a bony hip, careful not to wrinkle the fabric of her dress.

“It’s perfect, bunny,” he said softly, smiling.

God, Sonny loved him.

Sonny loved him when he looked at their daughter like that, loved hearing his booming laughter and her giggles fill up the space in their quiet kitchen, in their quiet _home_.

Sonny never thought he’d have this.

Love.

A husband.

A child.

A home.

Rafael had given Sonny everything.

Everything and more.

Sonny had love, and a beautiful man, a beautiful daughter, a beautiful life, and a beautiful _home_.

And it was all because of him, the man in a pair of sweatpants and one of Sonny’s oldest, most faded Academy t-shirts, kissing tenderly at their daughter’s pink cheek, a hand still firmly attached to the small of Sonny’s back.

“Alright, well now that you’ve got a tie picked out, can you go get ready, Rafi? We’re gonna be late,” Sonny whined, gently nudging Rafael towards the kitchen doorway and back into the hallway, in the general direction of their bedroom.

He then turned his attention to Elisa, who smiled cheekily as he ran slender fingers through her dark curls: “And I want _you_ to go get your brush so that we can do something with this hair, okay?”

“Okey dokey!” She squirmed out of his grasp until her feet hit the tile once more, immediately setting off and skipping towards the bathroom.

* * *

 

“Elisa, can you at least _pretend_ like you know how to eat properly? You know, like with a fork?”

Sonny grabbed another loose strand of hair that had managed to allude his grasp, tucking it into one of the three sections he had already separated as he crossed over and under, the braid that Elisa had requested becoming longer as he began to reach the ends of her tangled hair.

“We’re at home, daddy,” she answered through a smack of lips, shoving another bit of sticky pancake into her mouth by hand rather than with the silverware Sonny had originally handed her with the accompanying stack of pancakes. “I can eat with my fingers when we’re at home.”

Leaning forward, Sonny followed her movements as she dipped her head to catch a stream of syrup on her tongue before it dripped onto the pale blue front of her dress; a hand came up to brush back hair, Sonny immediately swatting it away.

“Hey! Fingers on the pancakes, young lady. Do you want to go to school with sticky hair?”

“Sticky hair? Why would someone have sticky hair?” a booming voice inquired somewhere over Sonny’s shoulder, a warm brush of lips against his cheek following close behind.

Sonny sighed, turned his head just slightly to watch Rafael as he strode to the counter and retrieved his coffee, undoubtedly now lukewarm as Sonny had prepared it for him almost twenty minutes prior.

He was wearing a jet black, three-piece suit – one of Sonny’s favorites, for the way that the rich, dark material gave his skin the appearance of being an even warmer, darker shade of brown.

Elisa’s hand-picked tie, tucked into Rafael’s vest, brought the look together seamlessly.

He brought his mug to the kitchen table, a coffee-laced kiss pressed to Sonny’s mouth.

“You look good,” Sonny whispered, pecking softly at Rafael’s lips as his hands paused their motion in Elisa’s hair.

He couldn’t touch; not like he wanted to. He couldn’t bring a hand to Rafael’s jaw, couldn’t bury his fingers into the short hairs at the nape of Rafael’s neck, couldn’t press closer.

Not without risking potentially messing up Elisa’s braid, the braid that Elisa had requested, specifically of Sonny because, “You do my hair the best, daddy!”

Not when he had to make certain that their daughter’s hair was perfect for her first day of school.

Kisses alone would have to suffice for now.

“Yeah, you do look good, daddy! Your suit is perfect with my tie!” Elisa proclaimed, still face forward, leaning yet again to intercept the syrup dripping from the pancake she was attempting to shove into her mouth.

Sonny adjusted his positioning accordingly, almost folding himself in half in order to better hold on to the ends of Elisa’s hair, effectively detaching himself from Rafael.

“Now, what’s this I hear about sticky hair?” Rafael asked, placing a firm kiss to the top of Elisa’s head. He took his seat across from her at the polished table top, mug of coffee attached to his lips as he swiped a slice of pancake from Elisa’s plate.

“Your daughter is refusing to eat her breakfast with her silverware.”

“I thought that you said eating without silverware was okay as long as we were at home, love?” Rafael quirked an eyebrow, Elisa giggling; she knew that she’d won.

“See! My statement has been corrobortated!”

“You mean corroborated, bunny?” Rafael supplied, barely holding back a laugh as his green eyes flicked back up to Sonny’s.

He was enjoying this, clearly.

Sonny hoped that he was shooting Rafael his best, ‘ _You-know-you’re-supposed-to-be-on-my-side-sometimes-Rafi_ ’ face.

“Yeah, that!” Elisa popped her final sliver of pancake into her mouth with a smack. “Told ya so, daddy!”

“Fine, fine, you guys win! Jeez, two against one is a little unfair, don’t you think?” Sonny shook his head, playfully, finally finishing off the remainder of Elisa’s braid with the hair tie that she’d brought him from the bathroom.

Moving towards the sink, he grabbed the burgundy wash cloth he’d used to wipe stray flour from the marble countertop during his earlier pancake-making process. Sonny stuck it under the tap, making sure to rid it of flour before walking back to Elisa, her hands already out and offered for him to clean.

“I was just worried,” Sonny started, grabbing a bony wrist and running the cloth gently over Elisa’s syrup-sticky fingers. “About you getting your dress all dirty. That’s all.”

He took both of her hands, – now syrup-free – their size and coloring in stark contrast to his. He kissed at Elisa’s knuckles, pulling back just enough to say, “Now go get your backpack, alright? We gotta leave soon if someone’s gonna be on time for her first day.”

Elisa nodded, braid bouncing as she took off towards her bedroom.

When Sonny turned, Rafael was standing, mug discarded, pulling him close by narrow hips.

“You’re a good dad, too,” he whispered, eyes soft, hands so large and warm on Sonny’s waist.

Sonny had long ago come to associate those two things with love: Rafael’s eyes, and his strong, strong hands.

Every time Sonny felt those hands on him, holding him, fingers spread on his belly, on his thighs, on his face, it was love.

Every time that Rafael looked at him like that, green eyes so soft and open and vulnerable – vulnerable for no one else but Sonny – it was love.

“I’m so nervous for her, Rafi,” Sonny confessed; Rafael’s thumbs were restless, tracing the curve of Sonny’s hip bones through the fabric of his slacks. “What if she doesn’t like it? Or what if her teacher is horrible, or she doesn’t make any new friends, and she ends up having to eat all by herself at lunch? What if – “.

“Sonny,” Rafael’s hands flew from their perch on his hip bones, encircling Sonny’s wrists, tugging them down and intertwining their fingers in an attempt to calm the nervous movements of his hands.

“You know that that’s not what’s going to happen. She’s going to do great. Phenomenal, even. She’s smart, and friendly, and outgoing, and everything good wrapped up into one wonderful little girl. She could break even the grumpiest of kindergarten teachers.”

Rafael’s lips were on his knuckles next, ghosting across their rigid path until he found Sonny’s wedding band and lingered.

“She’s growing up, Rafi.”

“She’s five.” Sonny hadn’t thought it possible for someone to appear so thoroughly condescending with their lips attached to their husband’s wedding ring.

But, well.

Rafael Barba-Carisi was an anomaly.

“You know what they say, Rafi,” and Sonny was laughing, cheeks pulled up, leaning forward and pressing his lips to Rafael’s, feeling Rafael’s smile underneath his, pressed into his as he pecked, once, twice, three times. “Kindergarten today, college graduation tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’m all ready for my big day!”

Elisa shoved herself between them, darting from around their legs and into the open expanse of the living room – too-big, leather, pastel pink and purple kitty cat backpack bouncing at her knees.

“Daddy’s gonna take a few pictures of you in your first day of school outfit while I grab your lunch, alright, bunny?” Sonny asked, already inching towards the section of the counter where Elisa’s matching, pink and purple polka-dotted lunchbox lay.

The shuffling of feet against tile followed Sonny’s declaration as Rafael positioned Elisa accordingly, his order of, “Smile big, bunny!” audible from Sonny’s post in the kitchen.

He placed a hand on the stack of cookbooks behind Elisa’s lunchbox, organized by type of cuisine, as was Sonny’s preference. Once he’d reached the Spanish section – comprised of one cookbook and one cookbook only – he tugged, the volume of authentic, hand-copied, Barba family recipes falling in to his hands.

Flicking past the cover, stained with a variety of ingredients from Sonny’s many forays into mastering Rafael’s favorite childhood dishes, his eyes fell onto the note, folded and tucked near the book’s spine, which he and Rafael had written for Elisa the night before.

It was a little wrinkled, the purple construction paper – snuck from the stack which Elisa kept on the corner of the coffee table at all times for, “emergencies, daddy” – having folded in on itself underneath the weight of the book’s cover.

The words themselves remained safe, however.

Sonny nestled the note in the space between Elisa’s turkey and cheese sandwich and a Ziploc bag full of animal crackers, making sure to keep a corner peeking out so that the splash of color would be the first thing that Elisa noticed when she unzipped her lunchbox that afternoon.

As Elisa’s cry of, “Can I do one with a silly face now, _please_?” made its way into the kitchen, Sonny smiled to himself; _she’s gonna do great_.

He zipped up Elisa’s lunchbox – sandwich, crackers, grapes, bottle of water, and note all in a row – and made his way into the living room.

_Have a great day, bunny!_

_We love you,_

_Daddy + daddy_

* * *

 

“Daddy, you’re squeezing my fingers too tight.”

Sonny relaxed his hold on Elisa’s hand, throwing an apologetic grin down at her as they moved farther along the crowded and raucous hallway of the lower level of P.S. 290.

He and Rafael had both grabbed a hand the second that Elisa’s car seat was unbuckled, before her Mary Jane’s had even had the chance to hit the pavement in the front of the elementary school.

And Sonny’s grip had only grown tighter as they’d entered through the metal double doors and began their trek towards the section of the hallway in which the kindergarten classrooms were clustered, so much so that Elisa released his hand momentarily, shaking out her fingers which had apparently gone numb.

“Sorry, bunny. I’m just – “.

“I know you’re nervous, daddy. It’s okay.”

Rafael smirked as Sonny threw a blue-eyed glare his way.

“What? I didn’t tell her.”

“Daddy didn’t tell me, I promise. I can just tell,” Elisa observed. “You’re quiet when you’re nervous.”

“And I’m loud when I’m not?” he teased, Elisa grinning cheekily up at him as her braid bounced behind her.

“It looks like we’re here!” Rafael stopped, Sonny and Elisa freezing to his left as swarms of other soon-to-be kindergarteners entered the classroom of which their family’s sights were currently set upon. “Room number seven, yes?”

“Yep, that’s the one!” Elisa was bouncing, swinging Sonny and Rafael’s arms with every little up and down movement of her legs. “Can I go in?!”

Rafael tugged Elisa to the opposite side of the door, out of the way of the oncoming traffic of children and tearful parents, taking a knee as Sonny followed his example.

If anything were a testament to Rafael’s devotion to their daughter, it was the knees of those dark suit pants, currently laid against the scuffed and dirty tile flooring of a public elementary school.

Those suit pants which were only there so that Rafael could say a few more words to their daughter before the official start of her “big day”.

The only other time that Sonny had seen Rafael on a knee like that, dirt and grime against five-hundred-dollar fabric, was when he’s proposed.

“Okay, bunny. What do I always say?” Rafael asked, smoothing down the ivory collar of Elisa’s dress. He took Elisa’s left hand, Sonny reaching for the opposite, a nervous thumb coming up and enveloping the top of Elisa’s hand, stroking, soothing – for his comfort more than hers, he knew.

“First impressions are the most important!” Elisa replied, short, succinctly, head and braid bobbing in unison.

“That’s right,” Rafael pushed her hair back, a few stray strands of brunette curls having freed themselves from her braid. “So go right in, find your teacher, and introduce yourself. Okay?”

No reply was to be had, however; instead, Elisa darted through the door to room seven, just short of smacking into another braid-clad little girl moving in the same direction.

Sonny was about to apologize to the little girl’s mother, explain that Elisa was just excited, maybe overly so, that Elisa hadn’t really _meant_ to bulldoze over her daughter, when a large hand took his.

Warm.

Calm.

_She’s gonna do great._

“Come on, love,” Rafael whispered. “Let’s go see our little girl off, shall we?”

Nodding, the pull of Rafael’s hand led Sonny inside, the cacophony of cries, and giggles, and pleas of, “Please don’t leave yet, mommy, please!”, and the sight of Elisa planting an Eskimo kiss on a woman whom Sonny could only venture was her teacher their shared introduction to the classroom.

“You’re the one that taught that to her, you know,” Rafael pointed out – rather unhelpfully – as they sped walked, still hand-in-hand towards Elisa’s display.

“Yeah? And you’re the one who told her to go introduce herself.”

Just as they reached the opposite end of the classroom, Elisa was straightening herself out, grinning brightly at the sandy-haired woman in front of her: “My name is Elisa Rosalie Barba-Carisi, and I’m five years old, and – Oh! Look, it’s my daddies!”

Sonny briefly wondered where on earth Elisa got the energy to tackle him and Rafael every time she saw them.

The thought was soon replaced with adoration, however, as Elisa grabbed ahold of his and Rafael’s pant legs, staring up at them with her wide and impossibly green eyes.

“This is my teacher, Miss Cox!” Elisa exclaimed, her gaze only venturing away from them when she threw an index finger in the direction of the petite, freckled woman to her left. “Miss Cox, these are my daddies!”

The woman – Miss Cox – stepped forward and offered a hand to Sonny, straightening out her navy pencil skirt with the other. “Hi, my name is Melissa Cox! And, if you hadn’t already guessed, I’ll be Elisa’s teacher for the school year!”

Sonny nodded at the greeting, taking her hand in his own and giving a firm shake. “I’m Dominick, but you can call me Sonny. And this is my husband, Rafael.”

She seemed bright, bubbly, energetic, with a smile as wide across as Staten Island itself – all of the qualifiers that Sonny had thought of when building the perfect kindergarten teacher in his head.

And Elisa seemed smitten with her, as well; her eyes were lit up as she observed their exchange, her stare focused and intent on the young teacher as she moved towards Sonny and Rafael.

Once Rafael had provided her with a greeting of his own, Miss Cox turned her attention back to Elisa: “Hey, Elisa, why don’t you go over and find your table buddy while I talk to your dads for just a second? You see that little girl over there, the one with the reddish hair and the glasses?”

Elisa followed the line of Miss Cox’s slender index finger to where it hit upon a girl in a bright purple dress, positioned at one of the room’s center tables; Sonny turned and put his lips to Rafael’s ear.

“She’s wearing purple, Rafi. They’re gonna be best friends.”

Rafael squeezed Sonny’s hand in answer.

“That’s Jane. She’s your table buddy for this year, which means you sit right next to her. So if you go over and say hi to her, you’ll be able to see where your name tag is. Got it?”

“Got it, Miss Cox! Thank you!” And Elisa threw her skinny arms around her teacher’s neck, squeezing momentarily before pulling back and making a run for her unsuspecting table buddy.

Straightening out, Miss Cox adjusted the shoulders of her blazer, Elisa-disheveled and rumpled.

“Sorry about the nose thing,” Sonny offered as her chestnut-colored eyes settled on him and Rafael. “It’s something we, uh. We do a lot at home, so.”

One of Miss Cox’s slender hands came up in a dismissive gesture. “Please. It was sweet. She’s very affectionate. And trust me, after five years of teaching I’ve learned that there’s a lot worse things that kids can be.”

She shuffled towards the side, peeking around Sonny and Rafael’s forms in an apparent attempt to check for the arrival of new parents before advancing on in their conversation; when it was decided that there was none to be had, she continued.

“Tell me, what do you two do for a living?”

Perhaps Rafael had sensed that Sonny was nervously glancing over at Elisa every few seconds, watching as she greeted her table mates, watching as she slung her kitty cat backpack over her miniature, plastic chair; maybe his silence had indicated to Rafael that he was distracted.

Whatever the reason, Rafael had read Sonny front and back, handling the question asked of them by Miss Cox.

“Well, I’m actually the executive assistant district attorney of Manhattan, and Sonny is a Manhattan SVU detective.”

Miss Cox _actually whistled_.

“ _Wow_. Power couple.”

Now that got Sonny’s attention.

Chuckling, Rafael shrugged, though the glint in his eyes was almost as smug as Sonny had ever seen it – the only event outweighing Miss Cox’s observation being the evening in which a stranger had approached him, Rafael, and Elisa while on their walk home from the local ice cream shop, stopping to point out how, “beautiful of a family you three make”.

“Oh, and is there anything you’d like me to know about Elisa before you leave? I ask the parents of my students to provide me with one or two parting fun facts about their child just so that I can get a slight idea of who they are.”

“She loves art! A lot. Like, _a lot a lot_ ,” Sonny interjected, because if there was anything someone should know about their daughter, it was this. “She’s always drawing, or painting, or doing some sort of new craft when we’re at home. Me and Rafael even had to buy her an easel last Christmas because she was always painting on the coffee table and would get watercolors all over the wood.”

“She’s also bilingual,” Rafael added, the little prideful puff of his chest not gone unnoticed to Sonny’s eyes. “She’s fluent in Spanish as well as English.”

It was one of Sonny’s favorite pastimes, in fact; sitting, listening to his husband and daughter chatter away in Spanish on the nights that they had their musical marathons together, Elisa cuddled up to Rafael’s broad chest, her nose always tucked away into tan shoulder and neck, her favorite spot the very same as Sonny’s.

Ninety-eight percent of the time, Sonny had no friggin’ idea what the subjects of their little back-and-forths were, but he didn’t care; Sonny loved that Rafael and Elisa had that connection, that shared link of their Hispanic heritage.

Somehow, in Sonny’s eyes, that little connection made it even more glaringly apparent that Elisa was meant to be theirs.

“Wow, that’s really wonderful! I’ve actually been wanting to implement some foreign language curriculum into my own lessons. I’ve read in a few teaching journals how beneficial learning another language can be to the developing mind.”

Just as Rafael was about to chime in with his concurrence – because he’d read those very same articles, Sonny knew – Miss Cox glanced down at the leather watch strapped to her wrist.

“Shoot! I hate to cut this conversation short, but the bell rings in about five minutes. I would go ahead and say your last goodbyes if I were you.”

She stepped away from them then, providing a similar warning to the various other sets of parents still filtering throughout the classroom, talking amongst themselves or reading over the rule charts tacked to the pale yellow walls.

“I don’t wanna say goodbye yet,” Sonny grumbled, feet dragging as though submerged in mud as Rafael led him to the table where Elisa was still perched, happily sorting through the box of communal art supplies placed in the center of the desk.

Crayons in hand, she exclaimed, “Look at all of these colors, daddy!” She gestured to the row of crayons, already Elisa-organized in color wheel order on the tabletop. “There’s magenta, and violet, and sunflower, which is my favorite so far! And look, I have my very own name tag, too!”

Sonny and Rafael gathered on either side of her shoulders, peering down at the multi-colored and animal-printed name tag which bore both Elisa’s name and their own.

“E-L-I-S-A. Elisa,” she declared proudly, rewarded with simultaneous kisses to opposing sides of the temple.

It was surreal, seeing it laid out like that.

Elisa Barba-Carisi.

It was almost as surreal as seeing her name, Elisa’s name, printed directly next to theirs, attached, on the official birth certificate they’d received by mail shortly after the completion of Elisa’s adoption.

It was another stage of Elisa’s life, another stage of theirs, another stage of Sonny and Rafael’s, and she was still theirs.

Elisa Barba-Carisi.

Theirs.

Sonny gripped Elisa’s shoulders and positioned her until his arms were fully enclosing the entirety of her little body, his nose pressed into her hair, the fruity scent of de-tangler still lingering from their hair-braiding adventures over pancakes just an hour prior.

“I love you so much, bunny,” he whispered. “So much. You’re gonna do so great today, and me and daddy are never gonna stop thinking of you once, not until we get home tonight and can talk to you all about your big day.”

He felt her arms tightening around him, fingers dug into shoulder blades as she answered, “I love you, too, daddy. And just remember that I’ll be in your heart all day.”

Sonny would not cry.

 _He would not cry_.

Especially not now, not when Elisa was letting go of him and taking ahold of Rafael.

Not when Rafael was whispering, “Te quiero, mi hermosa conejita.”

 _I love you, my beautiful bunny_.

Sonny would not cry.

He gave Elisa one parting, lasting kiss on the forehead before standing, Elisa settling back in her plastic chair, smoothing her dress down as she went.

Rafael tugged on Sonny’s hand before Sonny could stop himself, try to stay.

The nearer they got to the heavy, metal door, the more that Sonny wanted to turn back around, wanted to fix Elisa’s hair one last time, wanted to hold her close, hold her safe in his arms; tell her that he and daddy both loved her, so much, and that she was smart, and wonderful, and would make so many new friends.

He chanced a peek just in time to catch the press of Elisa’s palm to her lips, an ensuing arc and throw of hand following as she blew Sonny a kiss.

 _She’s gonna do great_.

As the door clicked shut behind them, Rafael pulled Sonny into his arms.

Crushed him, rather.

Kissed the top of his head.

Murmured, “You were right. She is growing up.”

His voice was hoarse.

He was affected by this, too.

Sonny stifled his laughter into Rafael’s tie, – _Elisa’s hand-picked tie_ – his nose rubbing against the soft shades of blue.

“Yeah, well. C’mon, Rafi. We have some first day of school pictures to show off.”

Sonny kissed his cheek, nuzzled Rafael with his nose.

“She’s gonna do great.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Elisa, it’s time to do homework!”

Rafael flicked an index finger out from underneath the converging pool of warm water and suds his hands were currently submerged in, liberally soaking Sonny’s shirt sleeve with a dose of dirty water.

They were washing dishes, side by side, Rafael’s left shoulder pressed to Sonny’s right as he scrubbed at the ceramic surface of a plate, ridding it of the remnants of Sonny’s homemade lasagna dinner before passing it off to his husband to dry.

Sonny swatted Rafael’s forearm with the maroon dishcloth gripped between his fingers, pressing his nose firmly to Rafael’s temple as he did so: “Hey, what was that for? Are you trying to get me naked? ‘Cause it’s not gonna work. We have some spelling words to go over, mister.”

“I’m offended that you think I have so little self-control,” Rafael scoffed, promptly reaching for the tap and cutting off the water’s stream. He handed the final plate to Sonny, leaning forward to graze his lips over the sensitive spot behind Sonny’s earlobe, already prickled over with a small, raised patch of goosebumps. “But after homework time and bedtime? _Absolutely_.”

Sonny fumbled the plate in his hands, almost slamming it on the counter as his cheeks colored over in rosy shades of pink, stuttering as he called out once again, “E-Elisa! It’s-it’s time to do your homework, come on!”

It was slightly embarrassing, but undeniably true; Rafael almost couldn’t contain himself at the thought of getting his hands on Sonny’s narrow, pretty, little hips tonight.

Between Elisa starting kindergarten, Sonny studying for the sergeant’s exam, and Rafael’s general lack of an open schedule overall as the Manhattan EADA, there’d barely been any leeway over the past month for them to pause and take things slow.

So a rare, midweek evening off in which their family was able to come together over a warm meal and be regaled by the latest tales of Elisa’s adventures in Room 7?

Rafael remembers thinking that a night alone in his office, nursing a bottle of scotch with his feet thrown aimlessly over the polished mahogany of his desk was as close to a perfect evening as one could get.

How foolish he had been.

Of course, that had been before he’d had a husband and daughter who’d made every facet of his life brighter in an almost incomprehensible way.

Almost nine years later, and dinner at six o’clock followed by homework time and making love to a man that he’d never dared dream to exist was what Rafael defined, unequivocally, as the perfect evening.

Rafael had found bliss in the domesticity of his life, and when he thought on it long enough, he couldn’t fathom a worthy explanation as to how he’d ever wanted anything but this.

“Where the heck is she, Rafi? I’ve called her like six times now.” Sonny stuck his head into the hallway, dabbing at the still-soaked portion of the cuff of his sleeve. “Elisa? Elis – oh. There you are. What took you so long, bunny, I thought I was gonna be calling you until your next birthday.”

Elisa giggled as she weaved herself throughout the obstacle of Sonny’s legs, just managing to dodge his advances before she was pulled off of her toes for a soapy hug.

“Sorry, daddy, I didn’t hear you the first time you called me!”

Sonny shot him an arch of brows, Rafael shrugging as he took the seat across from Elisa, already dumping out the contents of her backpack onto the kitchen table.

“What do you mean, ‘first time’? I called you like nine different times, bunny.”

Elisa, however, seemed keen on not providing an answer, instead focusing on procuring a pencil from the front pouch of her backpack, grasping it in hand and opening the bright purple folder which she’d designated her, “homework folder _only_ , daddy” after Rafael had tried sneaking a note to her teacher into the folder’s pocket last Monday.

“What homework do you have tonight?” Rafael asked, throwing Sonny an equally as confused glance before turning back to Elisa.

“Spelling words!” she proclaimed, pulling out the very first worksheet on the right side of her folder. “I have to write them two times each in my very bestest handwriting.”

Sonny took the chair between them, rolling up the shirt sleeves – one now wrinkled from Rafael’s earlier assault on it – of his checkered button-up. He peered over Elisa’s shoulder, giving a low whistle as his blue eyes scanned the paper from top to bottom.

“ _Dog_? I dunno, that’s a pretty tough one, bunny. You think you can do it?”

Elisa looked so absolutely offended at the notion that she wasn’t capable of spelling a word as simple as “dog” that Rafael couldn’t help the laughter that burst from behind his chest, warm, and bright, and full of affection for the man and little girl currently sat across from him.

“I don’t know. Can _you_ spell dog, daddy?”

And there was that patented Barba sass, a quality which Sonny insisted he’d instilled in Elisa from the time that she was old enough to talk, because, “You’re always sassing me in front of her, Rafi. Little kids are like sponges, you know.”

She stuck her tongue out then, eyes scrunched up and chin tilted to meet Sonny’s gaze, a flicker of hesitation not even passing over his husband’s face before he pulled an expression to match Elisa’s.

“Alright, alright, you two,” Rafael chuckled. “Can we please get some homework done now? Preferably _before_ the evening is over?”

Elisa re-focused immediately upon her paper, pencil moving in slow, meticulous curves and lines as she began the process of copying each of the week’s spelling words.

She was so like Sonny in that way: brain never ceasing in its ability to focus and re-focus itself almost spontaneously.

It reminded Rafael of one of Sonny’s first days on the job – post-moustache, blessedly.

Rafael had strode into the precinct that day, gait long and purposeful with a sole intent on the door to Olivia’s office.

So much so, it had seemed, that Rafael hadn’t noticed the presence of one loudmouth – and annoyingly handsome – detective at his shoulder, lanky legs finding no difficulty in keeping up with Rafael’s pace.

“Hey, counselor!” he’d started, hot breath ghosting against Rafael’s neck as he’d gained enough distance to walk directly to Rafael’s left. “I just wanted to let you know – now that I’m on the team for good and everything – how much I admire you! Like in court the other day, when you discredited the defense’s witness like that? _Man_ , that was awes – “.

“Carisi? Are you going to continue harassing Barba, or are you going to work on getting that DNA sample for me?”

 _God_ , how Rafael had loved Olivia Benson and her impeccable timing in that moment.

Sonny had frozen immediately, Rafael having turned just in time to catch the pink blush coloring over the height of Sonny’s cheekbones.

It had amazed Rafael, even then, how quickly Sonny had been able to re-focus tasks; in one second he’d gone from brushing shoulders with Rafael to settling behind his desk, all thoughts of his conversation with the counselor seemingly forgotten as he’d picked up his landline to call the ME’s office.

Nine years later, and Sonny had shared that little quirk with their daughter.

Nine years later, and Rafael was sharing a life with that irritatingly adorable and bright-eyed detective, the one who had caused Rafael’s heart to inexplicably beat a little faster after the appearance of that blush, the first time that Rafael had ever bore witness to its color.

Nine years later, and Rafael had caused that same blush a hundred times over, just as he’d hoped he would after seeing it that very first time.

“Hey, bunny, what’s this?” Sonny’s brows were furrowed as he leaned in closer to Elisa, long fingers finding purchase on a sheet of paper tucked carefully into the left side of Elisa’s folder.

He glanced over the sheet, head whipping upwards to find Rafael’s gaze, then Elisa’s once more.

“Is this from your teacher?” Sonny asked.

Elisa nodded, eyes never straying from the motion of loops and strokes she was creating with the pencil – almost held correctly! – in her hand.

As Sonny’s eyes trailed further and further along the paper, Rafael felt a knot in his stomach beginning to grow with every change in Sonny’s expression: brows furrowing even farther, mouth pulled tight in a taut line, blue eyes no longer alight with the same giddiness Rafael had seen reflected earlier as he and Elisa had played and teased.

“Rafi, read this.”

Sonny practically shoved the document underneath the tip of Rafael’s nose, concern alight across every plane of his sweet face as he set his eyes back on Elisa, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she carefully – _carefully_ – erased the “t” from the end of “cat”.

Rafael took the paper in both hands, gaze settling on the words, “ _Dear parent or guardian of,_ ”, followed by, “ _Elisa Barba-Carisi_ ” written in deep blue ink underneath the school’s contact information.

 

_This is to inform you that your child did not pass the recent hearing screening at our school. Results may or may not indicate the possibility of a hearing loss._

_We strongly recommend that your child receive a complete diagnostic hearing evaluation. Please contact your primary care physician for a referral to an audiologist in your area. An audiologist is a certified and licensed health professional who specializes in the identification, assessment, and management of hearing loss._

_A copy of the screening form is provided as well as a list of audiologists in the area._

_If you have questions about the screening results or if you need further information about the recommended referral, please call (917)225-9606._

_Sincerely,_

_Shelley Briscoe, School Nurse_

 

Rafael found it increasingly difficult to comprehend the medical jargon that took up the backside of the paper, only the word “unsatisfactory” printed bold, and black, and ugly next to over half of the test results defined clearly.

Unsatisfactory.

How had he and Sonny missed this?

Unsatisfactory.

It made his chest feel tight, his lungs burn, his stomach turn inwards on itself, because he and Sonny were the ones that had failed.

Not Elisa.

 _They_ had missed this.

This wasn’t the type of thing you missed, this wasn’t forgetting to remind your child to brush their teeth before bed once every few months, this wasn’t forgetting to sign the permission slip for a field trip to the Central Park Zoo – this was _missing_ something.

Not being aware, not paying close enough attention, not spending enough evenings at home to notice the warning signs –.

Sonny had had to call Elisa nine times.

Nine times, and she hadn’t heard him.

A warning sign.

It all made sense now.

Why, the past couple of weeks, when he’d managed to make it home at a relatively decent time, the TV in the living room had been turned almost to its maximum volume, Elisa sitting less than a foot away, coloring, while her nanny said from the kitchen, “She insisted on having it that loud. I tried, but. You can’t argue with her.”

Why, the past couple of weeks, when he’d tucked her in and she’d nestled into his side for story time before bed, she’d asked, “Can you please read louder, daddy?”

Warning signs.

And he had missed it.

Sonny must have read Rafael, read the set of his face and known that he was rapidly losing it, because he inquired, abruptly, “Are you almost done, bunny?”, a hand gesturing to the page underneath Elisa’s nose.

“Yep! All done! Will you check it for me, daddy?”

“’Course I will.” Sonny eyed the worksheet, making quick work of reading it over before pressing a kiss to Elisa’s temple. “It’s perfect, bunny. You did such a good job. Your handwriting is getting better and better every day.”

He fluffed her hair then, standing up from the table as Elisa placed her worksheet back in its folder, tossing it into her unzipped backpack.

“And now, it’s time for someone to go to bed. I’ll tuck you in tonight, bunny, okay? Daddy’s got some stuff he needs to look over for work.”

Rafael was about to protest when Sonny gathered the backpack and Elisa into his arms in one fell swoop, the backpack flung over his shoulder and Elisa tucked into the opposite side of his body.

“You go on and go to the bedroom, Rafi. I got it.”

He knew what Sonny was doing; Sonny was trying to give him the chance to be alone, to recollect himself before they talked, before they discussed whatever it _was_ that you discussed after processing the sort of piece of information that they’d been handed.

Sonny walked nearer to him, almost folding the length of his lanky torso in half in order to better allow Elisa closer access to his face.

She grinned, so happily at him, the bands around his ribcage squeezing farther as her lips brushed against his cheek: “Nighty night, daddy. I love you!”

Green eyes so bright; innocent.

Her world was meant to be safe, _protected_.

He’d never be able to forgive himself if something serious was actually wrong with Elisa.

Not if it was because he had missed it.

* * *

 

 

When Sonny entered their bedroom, eyes still bright and animated from his bedtime story rendition, Rafael was sitting on Sonny’s side of the bed, still fully-clothed, watch on his wrist and vest buttoned and intact.

“It’s my fault,” he said.

Quiet.

Not meeting Sonny’s gaze.

“What?”

Sonny’s voice was low, uncharacteristically so, so soft and unlike the deep booms that Rafael had grown accustomed to hearing from his husband’s mouth.

“It’s my fault, Sonny,” he repeated, eyes averted towards the cream carpeting underneath his socked feet.

“I should’ve noticed the signs, I’ve been with her more often than you have lately. And that’s not your fault, I know that you’re having to pick up overtime because of Rollins being on maternity leave again. I’m the one that’s home with her in the evening, so it’s mine. It’s my fault, Sonny, not yours – “.

“Rafael. Stop it. Stop it right now.”

And before Rafael could respond, his face was in Sonny’s hands, in Sonny’s strong, warm, calloused hands, Sonny sitting next to him on the bed, jaw set and eyes fierce as he turned Rafael’s entire body to face him with gentle hands on his cheeks.

“Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, Rafael. Don’t you dare. This is not your fault. How could you have known that this was going on, huh?”

Sonny’s thumbs were brushing over his cheekbones as he spoke, touches light and firm in the way that always had Rafael feeling safer than he had in his forty-nine years of living.

But Sonny was wrong.

He _had_ known what was going on.

“But I did know, love. Every night that I’ve come home the past couple of weeks, she’s had the TV blaring in the living room. And I brushed it off, because I figured it was just Elisa being Elisa – “.

“Of course you did. How could you have thought anything different? I hate it break it to you, Rafi, but our kid’s always been pretty weird. She’s always had little quirks like that, and those are the things that make her so special. Those things are what make her ours. So how could you have known any different?”

The light was still in Sonny’s eyes, Rafael noticed.

It wasn’t the twinkle of bedtime stories, though, of a little head against a strong chest and sleepy Eskimo kisses.

It was warmth and love.

It was Rafael’s look. The look that was just for him.

Sonny’s eyes were so _blue_ , his eyes were so _warm_ , his _chest_ was so warm, _he_ was warmth, and love, and the press of his thumbs was the singular thing keeping Rafael from falling apart right now.

“And it hurts me, ‘cause every time something like this happens, you automatically blame yourself. Like when she broke her arm at the park last year. We _both_ turned around, for what, two seconds? And then when we looked back, she’d fallen off the monkey bars.

“And you kept saying that it was _your_ fault, that _you_ should’ve been watching her, that _you_ shouldn’t have turned around, when we were _both_ there.

“We both turned around, Rafi, not just you. And it hurts me to see you do this to yourself, because you are such an incredible man. You’re an incredible husband, and I am so lucky to have you. And Elisa’s lucky to have you, because you’ve been an incredible father to her from the moment that we brought her home.

“So this is not on you. We will get her a doctor’s appointment, we’ll figure out what’s going on, and we’ll get through this together, just like we always have. Okay?”

With Sonny’s hands on his face, with Sonny’s words in his heart, Rafael knew that they would be okay.

That Elisa would be okay.

He was foolish to believe otherwise.

“Okay.”

They would get through this together.

He and Sonny, together.

Sonny kissed his forehead then, murmuring against his skin, “You know what, Rafi? Since Gina’s husband’s Elisa’s pediatrician, I bet I can call him and he can refer us to someone right now. Will that ease your mind a little bit, too?”

Rafael nodded, Sonny already on his feet and reaching for his phone perched on their shared oak dresser.

He dialed the number, and within seconds Rafael could hear the drone of Gina’s husband coming through the other line.

“Hey, Paul! Yeah, I’m good, real good. There was actually something that I wanted to ask you about. Elisa needs to see an audiologist, so I was wondering if you might know someone me and Rafi could get her into as soon as possible?”

There was silence for a few moments, Rafael grabbing Sonny’s hand from its position on his thigh, nervously toying with his wedding ring, twisting it back and forth in little circles around his bony finger.

“Oh, you have a friend that could see her tomorrow? You texted him and it’s already confirmed? Wow, thank you so much, man, I really appreciate it! No, it’s nothing serious, I don’t think. The school sent home some letter saying she needed to get checked out, so we’re trying to just stay on the safe side.”

A few more moments, a few more twists.

“Alright, well, thank you again, Paul! I really owe you one! Kiss Gina for me, will you? Thanks, man. ‘Night.”

Sonny tossed his phone on the bed as he pressed “end”, and Rafael finally felt as though he could breathe once more.

“Well, you hear that, Rafi? She’s got an appointment for tomorrow after school. You feel better now?”

He pulled Sonny closer to him, Sonny nuzzling his cheek and underneath the stubble of his chin as he tucked himself against Rafael’s chest.

“I felt better after you said that I was an incredible man. But, that helped a little bit, too.”

Sonny kissed at his clothed chest, over the pale blue fabric that lay across his heart.

“Yeah, well. Are you done making yourself feel like shit? ‘Cause I’d really like to make love to my husband tonight. I haven’t had the opportunity to do so in quite some time.”

As Sonny continued his press of kisses, from over Rafael’s heart, to across his collarbone, to up his neck, Rafael felt loved.

Sonny never blamed him for anything.

Sonny always knew just what to say to make Rafael see himself for who he truly was.

Rafael was a good man, despite how long he’d worked to convince himself otherwise.

Rafael wasn’t who his father had been.

He was a good man, an _incredible_ man according to Sonny, and Sonny saw that, Sonny _had_ seen that from the very beginning, and he’d always made sure that Rafael knew.

He threw an arm around Sonny’s waist, pushed him onto his back and straddled his thighs, undoing the strap on his watch and placing it on his bedside table.

Sonny was smiling, cheeks bright pink and dimpled, when Rafael kissed him.

“Thank you. I love you, Sonny. So much.”

Thin fingers carding into the ends of his hair, a smile under his mouth, Sonny’s warm body underneath his, and Rafael felt loved.

“I love you, too, Rafi. Now take off your pants, will ya?”

* * *

 

“Three little monkeys jumping on the bed! One fell off and bumped his head! Daddy called the doctor and the doctor said! Your turn, daddy!”

“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

Giggles erupted from directly behind him as Sonny roared the final line of the stanza, his eyes turning upward to catch Elisa bouncing away in her car seat, little feet kicking and grazing his own spot in the front of the car as she grinned happily.

As was Elisa’s way, she’d taken a few artistic liberties with the classic song immediately after he and Rafael had taught it to her for the first time, stating that there was to be no “mama”, only “daddy” or “papi” for the times when both he and Rafael were present for the song’s performance.

“Two little monkeys jumping on the bed! One fell off and bumped her head! Daddy called the doctor and the doctor said!”

“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

Sonny made a right, eyes scanning along the patchwork jumble of buildings that made up the medical plaza in which Park Audiology apparently stood.

He’d only had five minutes that morning to hastily scrabble down the address, the scrap of paper in which it’d been written on almost left behind in a flurry of lateness as he’d scrambled for his suit jacket, hasty kisses pressed to Elisa and Rafael’s temples before he’d ran out the door, the corner of a piece of burnt toast – an attempt by Elisa – shoved into his mouth.

He hadn’t had time to actually MapQuest the address, as he typically would’ve liked, hadn’t had time to plan out the most time-effective route between Elisa’s school and the audiologist’s office; he’d spent too long in bed that morning, in Rafael’s arms, with the overwhelming heat of Rafael’s body like a blanket thrown over his skin.

But they were here now, even having arrived twenty minutes before Elisa’s scheduled appointment, and Sonny was _totally_ giving himself a Super Dad sticker for this one.

“Alright, bunny, we’re here. You ready to go inside?”

Elisa shook her head almost violently against the headrest of her car seat, a pout that Sonny himself were proud of forming on her lips.

“ _No_ , daddy! We have to finish the song first!”

Sonny gasped at himself in horror, eyes wide and mouth agape as he spun around to meet Elisa’s gaze, his pretend-shock a perfect match to her amusement.

“I am so, so sorry, bunny,” he said, moving to prop his chin atop the driver’s side seat. “Please, continue. Don’t let me interrupt you again.”

She smirked, and Sonny only had a split-second to admire how distinctly her sweet face resembled Rafael’s in that moment before she was launching into the song’s final verse: “One little monkey jumping on the bed! He fell off and bumped his head! Daddy called the doctor and the doctor said!”

“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!” Sonny proclaimed, chest tight as Elisa leaned forward and brushed her nose against his, a soft whisper of, “Thanks, daddy” following an even softer kiss.

“You’re welcome, baby. Now, your appointment isn’t technically for fifteen more minutes, so you might wanna bring your bag, okay?” Sonny gestured to the canvas tote laid underneath the seat beside Elisa’s, its red handle fraying from five years of repeated use.

It was Elisa’s “art” bag, an idea which Sonny un-grudgingly credited entirely to Rafael after he’d made the suggestion following an afternoon in which they’d been made to cart Elisa along on a day-long trip to the DMV.

Sonny loved his daughter to death, and no one could dispute that fact, but four and a half hours’ worth of patty cake was enough to make him want to shove his head inside of a paper bag and scream.

And so the idea of the art bag had come to fruition, a canvas tote that had long been abandoned in a closetful of towels and various toiletries discovered anew, and filled to the brim with coloring books, crayons, and a box of magic markers.

Stickers and scrap paper had been added later, by Elisa’s suggestion, of course.

“Okay! I’ll draw daddy a picture while we wait since he couldn’t come,” Elisa said, unwinding her arms out from underneath the confines of her car seat’s buckles as Sonny undid its clasp.

She hopped down from the car, pale pink sneakers hitting pavement and tote bag slung over a shoulder as her little hand came up and wrapped itself around Sonny’s index finger.

“Yeah?” he asked as they started walking across the sidewalk, bounding up the concrete steps that led to the entryway of the office. “I bet he’d really love that, bunny.”

Once they’d entered the office, Sonny was assaulted with the odor of medical disinfectant, its scent so overwhelmingly strong and _sanitizing_ that it put his own arsenal of cleaning supplies hidden away underneath the kitchen sink to shame.

“Why does it smell so bad in here, daddy?” Elisa whispered, nose crinkled as she pressed her side tightly to Sonny’s leg.

She was nervous.

It was rarity, but that was why Sonny was so quick to scope it out whenever it occurred.

Whenever she was unsure about a situation, a person, a food, a place – she burrowed herself into either him or Rafael.

It was typically whoever was closest, her nose diving forward and finding safety in the warmth of a chest or a neck.

Or a leg, as it currently stood, until Sonny leaned down and scooped her up, her nose quickly finding its way to underneath his ear just as they approached the receptionist’s desk.

“Hi, my name’s Melanie! Welcome to Park Audiology!” one of the secretaries greeted, her orange curls bouncing against shoulders as she averted her eyes from the computer monitor at the head of her desk. “What can I help you with?”

Sonny nodded a greeting, said, “My daughter, Elisa, is supposed to have an appointment today at three. It should be under my name, Carisi?”

She clacked away, manicured nails almost echoing in the heavy silence of the waiting room: “It looks like it’s right here! Are you Dominick?”

“That would be me,” he answered.

“Great! Dr. Samuels should be out with you shortly, then.” She gestured to the waiting area directly to her right, almost empty save for an elderly couple perched across from the sole TV set of the office. “While you’re waiting, you can go ahead and make yourselves comfortable over there.”

Sonny nodded his thanks once more, already beginning to maneuver himself amongst the gaggle of unoccupied chairs, finally depositing Elisa into his lap once they’d reached the opposite end of the waiting area.

Elisa didn’t remove herself from the confines of his neck once they’d put a safe distance between themselves and the stranger at the front desk, however; instead, she seemed content with keeping Sonny’s neck caged within her arms and knobby shoulders.

Hell-bent, even, and that’s how Sonny knew.

“Are we drawing a picture for daddy?” he prodded, poking Elisa in her overalls-covered belly. “You know how much daddy loves your pictures, bunny. I bet he’d get the happiest smile on his face if you gave him a new picture when he gets home tonight.”

Slowly, Sonny felt her nod against his cheek.

“Yeah? What do you wanna draw him?”

There was a pause, but only one moment later and Sonny was peering into his daughter’s green eyes once more, the flutter of her eyelashes against his skin already a distant memory.

“Do you remember a couple days ago, when I was with daddy at the big court place? And you came to pick us up?”

Sonny grinned. “’Course I do. You looked like your daddy’s mini-me that day, all dressed up with your fancy sunglasses.”

The image had made Sonny’s heart melt: Elisa and Rafael, hand-in-hand on the courthouse steps, both dressed to the nines and awaiting his arrival.

Elisa had been wearing her sunglasses that day, a purple pair with ivory daisies lining its rims and frames; and Rafael, beside her, had been sporting his, a pair of ridiculously expensive Ray Bans whose only _real_ purpose Sonny described as, “making you look like a sexy movie star, Rafi.”

Her dark hair, her tan skin, her obviously-inherited sense of style; she’d even had a sytrofoam cup gripped in the hand that wasn’t holding onto Rafael’s – a hot chocolate, as Sonny had later been informed.

From the outside, she was a carbon copy of Rafael, and Sonny was sure that the resemblance he saw of his husband within their daughter was the type of happiness that no one else could ever have.

Sonny had thought, at one point, that that kind of happiness was unattainable for him as well.

It was too bright, too all-consuming, too _real_.

But that was before.

Before Sonny had found someone who didn’t try to change him, who didn’t try to tone down Sonny’s eagerness or amp up Sonny’s taste in clothing, who didn’t call Sonny “too sensitive” when he was inevitably hurt by whatever came through the doors of Manhattan SVU.

That was before Sonny had found someone who knew his flaws and loved him for them, before Sonny had found someone who was willing to give Sonny everything he’d ever wanted and more.

That was before Rafael, before Rafael’s love had made Sonny feel whole, before Rafael had given Sonny the joy of a child who had brought so much unexpected brightness into their life together.

Elisa tapped on his shoulder, already having pulled out a blank piece of construction paper and a 24-count pack of crayons, as well as one of her spare coloring books to use as a surface for the creation of her art.

“I’m gonna make your suit pink, okay?” she grinned, beginning to form the outline of what appeared to be Sonny’s head.

“Nah, you should make daddy’s suit pink,” he replied, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “To match his pink suspenders.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea! Thanks, daddy!”

Elisa’s whole entire body seemed to light up as she ducked her head to kiss Sonny’s cheek; her fingers never left the paper, however, as she began to give her drawn Sonny a dark blue suit.

“Elisa?”

Their heads lifted, the appearance of a nurse in the waiting room signaling the end of Elisa’s artwork.

“She’s right here,” Sonny gestured, alerting her of their presence before placing Elisa’s half-complete drawing safely into her tote, now slung over his own shoulder.

“You wanna walk or do you want me to carry you?” he asked his daughter – her distaste at being interrupted mid-picture made clear by the presence of an extremely Barba-esque scowl on her face.

“Carry me,” she demanded.

And with Elisa’s face shoved into his neck once more, Sonny followed the nurse into an examination room on the far-left end of the back of the office, where a man stood apt to greet them.

“Hey, you must be Dominick, Paul’s brother-in-law! I’m Dr. Samuels.” He offered a firm hand, eyes crinkled at the corners as he glanced between Elisa’s death grip and Sonny’s gaze. “And this must be Elisa?”

Sonny nodded. “She’s not normally this shy, but, uh. She’s not much of a fan of doctor’s offices. She always thinks that she’s gonna be getting shots.”

Dr. Samuels chuckled, then said, “And what kid doesn’t? But, I can guarantee that there won’t be any shots today, Elisa.”

Elisa perked up at that, her arms relaxing just the slightest as her eyes finally landed on the doctor’s form. “Really?” she asked softly.

“Yep. No shots,” Dr. Samuels gestured towards his nurse, her bright purple scrubs catching Elisa’s attention, Sonny noticed with a grin. “Allison and I are actually going to take you back for a few tests that’ll let us get a closer look at what’s going on inside of your ears. That sound okay to you?”

Her fingers tightened around Sonny’s collarbone: “Can my daddy come with me?”

Before he answered, Dr. Samuels beckoned them a few feet over, past the examination room, to where a panel of glass lined almost the entirety of the remainder of the wall, a testing lab visible just behind it.

“You see right here, Elisa?” he pointed, knuckles tapping rhythmically against the window. “This is our testing lab. You see all of those machines?”

Elisa nodded hesitantly, green eyes flickering from corner to corner of the large room.

“Well, in order for our machines to work properly, we have to have as little chance of noise as possible. Because if there’s too much noise, then our machines can get all wacky and give us the wrong results. So that means that the only people who can go in there are you, me, and my nurse.”

“But what if my daddy promises to be really quiet?! I just want him there so I can hold his hand!” Elisa exclaimed, and Sonny’s heart was breaking, he was _physically hurting_ inside, because Elisa’s little chest was rising and falling in the way that it only did after she awoke from a nightmare, when Rafael would have to sit on her bed, kiss her hair, and sing her back to sleep, his voice the only safe thing in her world in those moments.

“Hey, look at me real quick, bunny,” Sonny whispered, the hand he placed on her cheek as soft and warm as his voice. “I know that you can go in there without me, ‘cause you’re a brave girl, right?”

She shook her head, nose bumping Sonny’s fingers with the force of her answer.

“C’mon, yes you are. You’re the bravest little girl I know. And if you can be brave, right now, you can tell daddy all about how brave and strong you were when he gets home tonight. And he’ll be so proud of you, bunny.”

She sniffled, tears having formed behind her bright eyes but not yet spilling forward. “Will you be proud of me, too?”

“Of course, I will!” Sonny strode to the window, pointing out one of the various desks which lined the outer perimeter of the room, their tops laid heavy with medical machinery. “No matter where you sit, you’ll be able to see me through here. So if you get scared, or nervous, you can look over here and find me, and I’ll be right here. Okay?”

Gently, carefully, Sonny lowered Elisa until her sneakers came into contact with the tile flooring once more, his own knees bending to meet her gaze. His hands settled on her sides, holding her close and safe to the narrow set of his chest.

“So you think you can do that, bunny? Be brave?”

Sonny felt her fingers come to rest on top of his, her little palms flat against his larger ones.

“I think I can, daddy.”

“That’s my girl.” Sonny pressed his lips to her forehead, pecked once, twice, three times, before pulling back and saying, “I love you. Now go with the doctors, okay?”

The nurse offered a hand, her kind grin spreading wider when Elisa finally – timidly – took it.

“You stay right there, daddy, okay? Don’t move,” Elisa ordered, her index finger wagging at Sonny; he chuckled, as it was the same gesture he often employed in the rare moments when Elisa didn’t clean her room or she snuck pretzels into her bed.

“I’m not going anywhere. My feet are glued to this spot.”

And with that, Elisa was trailing Dr. Samuels, her fingers still intertwined tightly with the young nurse’s.

* * *

 

Thirty minutes later, and Sonny found himself as the one sitting in the examination room chair as Dr. Samuels threw a leg over the countertop nearest him.

He’d texted Rafael an update the moment that Elisa had sat across from the first machine, Dr. Samuels at her left and the nurse at her right.

Sonny had made it quick, succinct, because he knew that Rafael was in court and wouldn’t be able to do more than glance at his phone once it buzzed with the arrival of Sonny’s message: _Elisa’s doing ok. Almost had a meltdown, but crisis was averted. Expect lots of stories when you get home._

 _Okay. Love you both_ had been Rafael’s just as short, but significantly sweeter reply; his answer had practically been beginning for Sonny to shoot off a final, _We love you too_.

“So, uh, where’s Elisa? Is she doing a few more tests?” Sonny asked, biting at the jagged edge of a thumbnail.

 _Dammit_. He’d been better at not doing that, too.

“No, no, I just had my nurse take her over to the playroom we have down the hall,” Dr. Samuels explained, opening the manila file folder he’d brought into the room – presumably, one which contained Elisa’s test results. “I’ve just found in the past that it’s easier for me to do all of the medical-speak with the parents when they’re on their own. And then, together, we can worry about explaining things to the kids.”

Dr. Samuels laid the files on the still-empty space of counter before him, eyes darting back and forth from indecipherable letter to indecipherable number.

“So it’s not good news than, huh?”

The doctor smiled, kind, motioning to the documents at his side, “It’s not the kind of news that any parent hopes for, no. But it’s not terrible news, either.”

When Sonny simply arched a brow, the man continued.

“You and your husband adopted Elisa, yes? And I’m assuming that there were no familial medical records provided to you by the agency?”

Sonny grimaced. He should’ve guessed this.

“No, she was a Baby Doe so they didn’t have any records from her birth parents. Which leads me to believe that, whatever it is that Elisa has, it’s genetic?”

Dr. Samuels nodded, hands flying as he began to thumb through Elisa’s reports once more.

“I’m almost positive, just based on her test results and the records that your brother-in-law faxed over. There’s a definite hearing loss present, but, according to the records that I have, it wouldn’t have been caused by anything medical-related in the past five years. She doesn’t have a history of ear infections, and she hasn’t had measles, or an extreme bout of the flu. So, the only viable explanation is a genetic predisposition.”

Sonny breathed.

Sonny breathed, and felt relief.

Relief because, he and Rafael hadn’t missed this – they just simply hadn’t _known_.

Relief because they’d kept their promise, and they’d kept their little girl as safe as they possibly could, and because what had suddenly been sprung upon them was because of knowledge that they’d never been provided with.

This wasn’t because of their inabilities as parents.

They just simply hadn’t known.

“So it’s nothing too serious than, doc? I feel like you would’ve told me already if it were something serious.”

The man chuckled, his hand coming up and rubbing along the black and gray scruff that peppered his jaw.

“No, it’s not serious. She will need hearing aids, and there’s a strong likelihood that her hearing will progressively worsen as she gets older. But the chances of her ever completely losing her hearing are slim to none.”

Relief.

It wasn’t serious.

They would be able to get their little girl through this.

“Is there anything else that we need to do today?” Sonny asked; his chest felt light, airy, more open than it had all day.

Breathing felt easier when brought with the knowledge that Elisa would be okay.

“Well, we’ll need to get Elisa fitted for her hearing aids before you leave. If I place the order as soon as that’s been done, the company will be able to overnight ship them and they should arrive here by tomorrow,” Dr. Samuels finished with a grin. “But other than that, no. Your daughter’s going to be just fine, Sonny.”

It was one of the best combinations of words that Sonny had ever heard; “I love you”, coming from Rafael and Elisa’s lips, and, “your daughter’s going to be fine.”

“Fine”.

“Fine” was perfect for Sonny.

“Fine” was good enough for now.

As they made their way towards the door, Sonny stopped himself just short of following the doctor’s long strides back into the office’s hallways.

“Hey doc, I do have one more question for you, though. Do they make hearing aids that come in purple?”

* * *

 

Rafael was dying to know.

Rafael was dying to know, and he was just about prepared to strangle Sonny because of it.

Sonny had called him on the way home from Elisa’s appointment, during a lull in Rafael’s schedule and the normally ceaseless City traffic.

When Rafael had questioned Sonny on the intricacies of Elisa’s visit – how it’d went, if Elisa had warmed up to the doctors, what the test results had indicated – Sonny had answered, simply, “I’ll tell you when you get home, Rafi. It’s too much to explain over the phone.”

Rafael distinctly remembers pinching the bridge of his nose and counting to ten before saying, as calmly as one could through gritted teeth, “ _No_ , Sonny, it’s not.”

Sonny had replied, tone annoyingly sing-song and saccharine, “ _Yes_ , Rafi, it is. Now Elisa, say goodbye to daddy!”

And before he’d had the chance to argue, a biting objection on the tip of his tongue, Elisa had said, loud enough for him to hear through the phone’s receiver from her position in the backseat, “Bye, daddy! Te amo!”

Rafael wanted to strangle Sonny.

And he was going to, as soon as that dumb, adorable, blond head made itself known once he’d stepped into their apartment.

Except, as soon as he’d toed his way through the front door, he was intercepted by a flash of brunette hair, anxious fingers grabbing at his vest, and a yelp of, “Daddy, you’re home! Pick me up! Pick me up!”

It was half-tackle, half-hug, but Elisa was enclosed in the entirety of his arms all the same, her little hands coming up to rest on his face as she exclaimed, “How was court today, daddy?! Did you win?! Did you put the bad guy away?!”

“Yes, I did,” he chuckled, pressing a momentary kiss to her forehead. He let the briefcase at his side fall to the floor, against the support of the coffee table before striding to the kitchen bar top, where Sonny, grinning sheepishly from behind the safety of the counter, maneuvered between the clutter of pots and pans he’d laid out on the stove, his goofy “Kiss the Cook” apron tied loose around his waist all the while.

“But, more importantly, how did your doctor’s appointment go, bunny? What did you find out?”

He pointed a glare at Sonny, over the top of Elisa’s head as he sat her gently on the span of countertop between them. His husband, now apparently immune to his, “courtroom glares of death”, – Sonny’s chosen phrasing for the look – only smiled wider, dimples puckering deep in his cheeks.

“Well,” she began, and she placed her palms on Rafael’s face once more, apparently needing to bring him closer. “The doctor told me that I don’t really hear as good as other kids. He said it’s probably because whoever took care of me before you and daddy did didn’t hear very good either.”

She was practically bursting, Rafael’s heart right along with her, her legs kicking and swinging over the edge of the bar top, entire body bouncing and her outstretched fingers still spread over the whole of Rafael’s cheeks.

“But guess what, daddy?! I get to have these things called hearing aids that daddy said will give me superpowers to hear better! _Real_ superpowers, like Rapunzel and Elsa!”

Sonny’s grin – bright, happy, _beautiful_ – over the height of Elisa’s curls was all that Rafael could see.

Superpowers.

Elisa had _superpowers_.

Not a disability, not something that made her different, not something to be ashamed of and to be hidden away, but _superpowers_.

It was something that made her stronger, more powerful, more incredible of a little girl than she already was – and what a phenomenal feat to overcome that had been.

“See, Rafi, there’s no way I could’ve told you all that over the phone. You had to hear it from the super girl herself,” Sonny added, dimples still showing, smile tender and full on his face, and Rafael _loved him_.

Everything was going to be okay.

Their little girl had superpowers, the hearing loss wasn’t serious, wouldn’t ever _be_ serious, and everything was going to be okay.

“Oh, and my hearing aids are gonna be purple, daddy! I get to wear my favorite color every day now!” Elisa exclaimed.

She stuck an index finger into his chest, hitting the silk, navy fabric of his tie. “You have to wear one of your purple ties to work tomorrow so that we can match. ‘Cause guess what, I get to get them after school tomorrow!”

Rafael finally found his voice, one of his larger hands enveloping and squeezing the bony fingers laying against his suit jacket: “I promise that I’ll be at your appointment tomorrow, bunny. I’ll cancel all of my afternoon meetings if I have to.”

He brushed his lips across her knuckles, then added, “And, you can pick out my tie for me tomorrow. Because I think that getting superpowers counts as a pretty big day for my bunny.”

“It’s the biggest day, daddy! It’s gonna be the _best_ day!” she said, and the hug that Rafael found himself being pulled into was much closer to strangling as Elisa’s arms looped themselves tightly around his neck.

“Okay, okay, bunny, go wash your hands before you break daddy’s neck. Dinner’s almost ready,” Sonny laughed, lifting her up by the waist and depositing her on to the kitchen floor.

Elisa giggled and bounded off down the hallway, leaving Sonny to motion to the sizzling pans at his left: “I made steaks for dinner tonight. And chicken nuggets for the princess, of course. I figured that today was worth celebrating with more than leftover lasagna.”

In three steps, Rafael managed to close the space between them.

In three steps, he hooked an arm around Sonny’s skinny waist.

And in one motion, he pulled Sonny down by the back of the neck, fingers curling and winding upwards into thick hair, lips finding his in a kiss.

“I love you so much,” he breathed, hand on Sonny’s warm neck, palm spread on a strong back. “You’re incredible, Sonny. Absolutely incredible. What you said to her – “.

“I just didn’t want her to feel like she’s any different, Rafi, ya know? I don’t want her feeling like she’s any worse than anybody else,” Sonny answered. He leaned forward, rubbed the tip of his nose, up and down, gently, against the bridge of Rafael’s. “’Cause she’s amazing. Hearing impairment and all.”

Rafael was about to voice his obvious agreement to Sonny’s simple, yet incredibly poignant words, when the stench of ashy smoke erupted from behind them, ending their embrace preemptively.

“Shit!”

Sonny scrambled for one of their ridiculously extravagant stove’s knobs, – he’d been the one who’d insisted on its purchase – cutting off the heat to a pot resting on the burner to the farthest right with a sigh.

“Well, looks like the broccolis burnt. You’re lucky I love you and that I don’t mind your distracting kisses, Rafi,” he grumbled, an index finger wagging as he removed the stainless-steel pot from the stove and set it in the sink, its contents to be dealt with after their dinner.

“That I am,” Rafael whispered.

Sonny had turned towards him, away from the still-smoking pot, hip cocked and a lopsided grin – dimples and all – aimed in his direction.

Sometimes, even after nine years, Rafael wondered how he’d gotten so lucky as to have Sonny choose him.

To love.

To raise a child with.

To grow old with.

Sometimes, even after nine years, Rafael wondered how this adorable, beautiful, goofball of a man had found his way into Rafael’s life.

But then, Rafael remembered that the “how” didn’t matter.

All that mattered, every day, was that Sonny had.

Before he could go on a search for plates, Sonny’s arms were around him, and Sonny’s lips had overtaken his, his heart, his breathing: “It goes both ways, Rafi. Always has.”

He stepped back, long arm finding purchase on the oven’s handle, Elisa’s chicken nuggets baking behind it’s door.

“It’s probably better that I burned the broccoli anyways, Rafi. Elisa hates broccoli.”

* * *

 

“How much longer do we have to wait, daddy?”

Elisa’s back was laid against Sonny’s chest, her words tickling the underside of his jaw as he toyed with the loose ends of hair at the tied-off portion of her braid.

They once more had found themselves in the examination room of Park Audiology: Elisa, restless in Sonny’s lap, and Rafael, restless at Sonny’s side.

Only after a brief introduction between Rafael and Dr. Samuels had the man stepped out of the room, in order to retrieve Elisa’s new hearing aids; already, Sonny’s husband and daughter looked as though they were about to burst out of their skin.

“Give it a minute, bunny,” he murmured, draping her braid over the shoulder of her pale purple cardigan – chosen in a wave of barely-contained excitement that morning at the prospect of getting to match the colors of her outfit to the shade of purple that she’d chosen the previous day for her hearing aids. “The doctor only left a little bit ago. He’ll be back before you know it.”

Elisa sighed, dramatically, as was her wont when a situation required far more patience than she was truly willing to allow.

“I know, I just – I just _really_ want my superpowers, daddy! Plus, then we can all match my hearing aids!”

As Elisa leaned away from his hold, prodding Rafael in the belly where his pastel purple and plum-striped tie lay, Sonny cast his gaze downwards, at his own deep, purple suspenders peeking out from underneath his jacket’s lapels.

Truth be told, they’d been a gag gift, courtesy of one Amanda Rollins only a few weeks after Sonny had first informed her – drunkenly – that he and Rafael had been dating.

She’d thrown the package at his head one quiet morning at the precinct, without an accompanying word of explanation.

Only after Sonny had peeled back the paper, revealing the suspenders underneath, had she smirked, and said, “You’d already started wearing three-piece suits before you two had even gotten together. I’ll know you’re about to get married when I see you wearing those.”

Sonny had only worn them once before, _during_ he and Rafael’s wedding – their color scheme for the event had been varying tones of purple and a warm cream.

Sonny had only worn them once before, that is, until he’d surprised Elisa with their reveal that morning over Cheerios and toast.

His wedding to the love of his life and one of their daughter’s “big days”; Sonny thought his suspenders had a pretty good track record, if he did say so himself.

“Alright, Miss Elisa, are you ready to try on your brand new hearing aids?” Dr. Samuels’ form re-entered the examination room, a small, black case held between thin fingers. “This is actually your permanent case that I have right here. This is where you’ll put them when you take baths, or go to bed. Things like that.”

Elisa and Rafael both bolted upright beside him, Elisa’s head no longer laid over the soft curve of Rafael’s stomach. She stared, attentively, as the doctor began to remove her hearing aids from the case’s plush interior.

He approached, slowly, and bent down at Sonny’s left, at Elisa’s eye-level: “I’m gonna go ahead and put these in now, okay, Elisa? They’re already turned on, so as soon as I put the first one in, you’ll be able to hear differently. It might feel a little weird at first, but that’s normal.”

“Okay,” she nodded; her fingers interlaced with the hand Sonny had resting on a knee, then Rafael’s that was on his other. “I’m ready.”

Gently, Dr. Samuels inserted the small, clear piece into Elisa’s ear, the shimmery, purple ear hook – Sonny knew what the various parts were called, he’d looked up a diagram last night – attaching along the slope of her earlobe.

“Okay, now for the next one.” He shuffled, shifted across the tile from foot to foot until he’d reached Elisa’s right ear. Once more, with a softness far greater than his large hands should allow, Dr. Samuels placed the hearing aid into Elisa’s ear.

Stepping back, palms spread wide in an inquiry, he asked, “How do they feel, Elisa? Everything sound okay?”

Her eyes were so wide, expressive, and sparkling as she jerked to face Rafael, then back to Sonny.

It was like watching her take her first steps all over again.

Stumbling, unsure, curious; hands scrambling for the coffee table’s edge as she was thrown off balance by a whole new bright and open world around her.

“Well?” Sonny whispered anxiously, nuzzling Elisa’s soft hair. “Can you hear better now, baby?”

One more beat, one more quizzical glance, one more metaphorical grab at polished wood, and then, “Has your voice always been that loud, daddy?”

She’d found her legs – and the coffee table – again.

Sonny didn’t think he’d ever stop smiling as he took Elisa’s face in his hands, her happy grin framed by gentle fingers, Rafael’s booming laughter – Sonny’s favorite sound, the sound that reminded him of that night in the hallway, of walking Elisa up and down, and back and forth along its length – erupting from beside him, an answer of, “Yes, trust me, bunny, daddy’s voice has _always_ been that loud” leaving his husband’s lips.

“I guess I’ll take that as a resounding ‘yes’, then,” Dr. Samuels chuckled, handing over Elisa’s case to Sonny’s one free hand – the other, still permanently drawn into Elisa’s clutches.

“There are a few more things to go over,” he added swiftly. “Just basic things, like how to adjust the volume, how to turn them on and off, how to tell when the batteries are dying.”

He turned to face his littlest patient, swiping a hand through sandy hair as he did so: “Do you have any final questions for me, Elisa?”

Brightening – somehow – even more, she whipped her head around, effectively swatting Sonny in the nose with the tip of her braid. She leaned, farther and farther away from the confines of his chest until her nose met Rafael’s.

“Can you sing to me when we get home, daddy? I wanna hear ‘You are My Sunshine’ now that I have my superpowers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO.
> 
> I know that it took me forever to update, and I sincerely apologize for that! Now that I'm done with finals and on break, I'm hoping to be able to update more quickly for you guys. 
> 
> I hope that this chapter was worth the wait. <3


	3. Chapter 3

“My daddies won’t give me a baby sister or baby brother. So that means _you_ need to have a baby, Carmie.”

Rafael wasn’t quite sure that he’d heard correctly, after his phone conference with the mayor had ended.

But no, that had been Elisa’s eager whisper – she was always so good about being her version of quiet in “daddy’s office” – peeking through the barely-visible crack in his heavy oak door.

She’d been sitting with Carmen, just on the outside perimeter of his office for the duration of his pseudo-meeting; Rafael had had no doubts, as he’d placed his landline back onto the receiver, that when he’d exited his office he’d find Elisa, propped on the surface of Carmen’s desk, having sweet-talked herself into a French braiding session.

But then, Elisa had said what she’d said, and Rafael hadn’t been able to move.

He’d been frozen.

Stunned.

He’d only been able to listen.

Listen, as Carmen laughed, and said, “Really, Elisa? I don’t even have a boyfriend. What makes you think that I’ll be having a baby any time soon?”

Elisa had huffed – it had been quite an audible one, even from within the confines of his office – better to portray her annoyance at the shooting down of her ingenious idea, he was sure; she _was_ half Barba, after all.

“I know, Carmie. It’s just…I want a little brother or little sister _so_ _bad_! Jessie, that’s auntie ‘Manda’s daughter, by the way, is getting a new baby sister soon! And she’s told me all about how she’s gonna play with her, and take care of her, and be so nice to her! And I just want a little baby brother or sister that I can love like that, too.”

And then, she’d added, before Carmen could get a word in edgewise, “And sometimes it makes me sad, ‘cause both of my daddies can’t hold me at the same time. But if I had a baby brother or sister, both of my daddies would have a baby to hold!”

Rafael wasn’t entirely sure that he’d heard the remainder of their conversation – Carmen had quipped something along the lines of, “Maybe your dads will change their minds”, and Rafael had pulled Elisa back into his office before his mind could wander any farther.

But the truth was, his mind hadn’t gone far from the thought that entire evening.

Even when Elisa, forty-five minutes later, had shoved herself into his lap and proceeded to lay her completed artwork – the work-in-progress picture from her doctor’s appointment the week past, starring Rafael in his bright pink suit and suspenders to match – across the latter portion of his desk, and he’d kissed her temple and squeezed her closer to him, his mind hadn’t strayed.

Even when Sonny had arrived home, blessedly early, and enveloped him from behind from his position at the stove, large palms spread and covering his chest, his mind hadn’t strayed.

Even when Sonny had brought soft lips to his ear, murmured low, and through a grin, “Ya know, every time that I come home, and you’ve got dinner going, and our little girl started on her homework, I fall even harder for you. I don’t know how you do it, Rafi, but I do.”, his mind hadn’t strayed.

And even now, with Sonny’s bare back laid against his own bare chest, skinny body sprawled in between his thighs, blond hair tickling where it tucked underneath the slope of his chin, his mind hadn’t strayed.

Not once, that entire evening, even when he’d played a poor attempt at starting the book that Sonny’s mother had recommended to him last Sunday over brunch, had his mind strayed.

Even the title page had yet to have gone read.

And he knew that Sonny had noticed.

He knew that Sonny had noticed, over their dinner of beans and rice, when his typically daily, playful Spanish banter with Elisa – the better to tease Sonny with – had been practically non-existent.

He knew that Sonny had noticed, as they’d washed the night’s dishes and his corny remark about “being wet” had earned little less than a snort from Rafael’s lips.

He knew that Sonny had noticed, only ten minutes earlier as he’d crossed their mattress and laid himself in between Rafael’s spread legs, Rafael simply allowing him to lazily settle into his arms.

No kisses, no teasing about “needing” to be cuddled, no squeezes of sides or bony hips, and Sonny’s blue eyes had known.

Ten years in less than two months, and Sonny had known.

Sonny sighed, and turned slightly, the index cards held between his long fingers discarded on the bedding beside them; notes and various terms from the sergeant’s handbook, his nightly routine of studying abandoned in favor of analyzing Rafael’s distant expression.

His fingers were firm, their movement purposeful as they came to rest along Rafael’s jaw and brush stubble.

“What’s on your mind, Rafi? You’ve been quiet all night.”

Rafael shook his head, thoughts jumbled as he tried to pull Sonny’s features back into focus.

“It’s nothing,” he started; his hand came to lay atop Sonny’s next, removing his thin fingers from their perch on his chin. “I’m just tired. And stressed. This case has been absolute hell to prosecute.”

A triple homicide, one in which sexual assault had been present on two of the victims.

Sonny knew, as well as anyone could, the absolute mess that the defense attorney was making of their lack of evidence against his client; the result of which was one or three evening fingers of scotch, a habit which Rafael normally preferred to refrain from within the confines of their home, in front of Elisa.

But, Sonny himself had even encouraged it, known that he’d needed it after the beat downs he’d been subjected to in court on those days.

If only his thoughts could be so simple now.

Sonny nodded, sympathetically.

“You sure that’s all it is? ‘Cause normally, when you cook a dinner as good as the one you made tonight, I don’t stop hearing about it for _at least_ three hours after. Elisa noticed, too, ya know. Asked me if you were sick, ‘cause apparently, according to her, the only time that you’re this quiet is when you aren’t feeling well.”

He chuckled, pulling until the cool surface of Sonny’s wedding band had met the warmth of his lips. “My performance was off during story time, wasn’t it?”

“Eh,” Sonny motioned side-to-side, an indication of his subpar bedtime performance accompanied by a dimply grin. “I only noticed you were distant ‘cause you didn’t make fun of my _truly awful_ Cinderella impression.”

“I suppose that _is_ quite out of the norm, isn’t it?” Sighing, Rafael pressed a kiss to the center of Sonny’s hair, soft as his daily application of gel began to lose its hold. “I don’t mean to worry you two. You know that, right? That’s the last thing I ever want to do.”

“’Course I do. It’s just,” and Sonny was flipping to face him, thighs coming to straddle his rather than remain held between them. “I know you, Rafael Barba- _Carisi_. After ten years, sometimes it feels like I know you better than I know myself. And I know when something’s on your mind.”

He bumped their noses, a light touch which turned into a momentary nuzzle.

“Now, we don’t have to talk about it tonight. I wouldn’t make you do that. But I know that it’s more than just this case, Rafi.”

Sonny’s eyes were so honest, and clear, and tender, and Rafael _wanted to tell him_.

Rafael wanted to tell Sonny all about the thought that hadn’t left his mind, not once that day since Elisa had whispered into Carmen’s ear her plans to get the sibling that she so desperately wanted.

Rafael wanted nothing more than to tell Sonny, to hold his love’s face in between his palms, and say, “ _Let’s do it all again. Let’s add to our family, Sonny. Let’s add to this life that we’ve built for ourselves._ ”

But he couldn’t.

Because if he were to tell Sonny, get Sonny’s hopes up about this flicker of an idea which had only just started to take form today, only to snuff the flame out because of his own insecurities, he knew that he would hurt Sonny.

It was easier to stay quiet.

It was _better_ to stay quiet.

“I promise you, love,” Rafael whispered. He cupped Sonny’s cheeks, gently, the pale softness of his skin sliding through Rafael’s fingertips as their foreheads met. “That there is nothing wrong. You and Elisa don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine, and I love you, and I love our little girl, and my job is the only thing that is stressing me out right now. There is nothing else.”

Sonny’s lips were thin, pressed tight into a line as straight as the ones that covered his forehead as he nodded, baby blues still unmistakably weary.

“Okay, Rafi. Whatever you say.”

Before his mind could wander any farther, Rafael pressed himself to both Sonny’s body and lips, finding silence within the soft scrape of Sonny’s teeth across his neck and chest.

* * *

It was bright.

Warm, and open, and so incredibly bright.

Bright like Sonny’s laughter in his mouth, bright like Elisa’s fingertips on his face, bright like her whispers of, “Te amo, daddy” while braced against his chest, bright like the feeling of the whole of his heart being held between a set of little palms.

With his forearms braced against the marble countertop, a mug of mid-morning coffee in hand, and the bright echoes of his husband and daughter’s voices gaining in on him from the hallway, and Rafael didn’t think that the world could get any brighter.

“Elisa Rosalie, you cannot outrun the tickle monster!”

“Yes, I can, daddy, ‘cause I’m faster than you!”

Tiny, socked feet were the first thing that he saw sliding around the hallway corner; then, was Elisa’s shining, _bright_ face, her green eyes sparkling even in the dimness of curtain-covered light cast throughout the living room.

“Quick, daddy! Where should I hide?!”

Her question was more shout than whisper, her head and messy braids whipping from side-to-side as she turned to face Rafael while bounding behind the safety of the couch.

“If the tickle monster catches me, he’ll eat me! And then, you’ll have no more Elisa!”

“No more Elisa?” Rafael gasped, the hand that wasn’t steadying his mug coming up to clutch at the dark blue fabric laid over his chest. “Well, that won’t do at all. Come hide behind me, bunny.”

With a grin, Elisa scurried around the bar top and pressed herself firmly against the back of Rafael’s legs until her little body was obscured entirely from view of the living room.

“Do you think he can see me back here, daddy?” she whispered, fingers clutching the sides of his slacks.

“I don’t think so, but if he does, we’ll use our superpowers to – “.

“Alright, Rafi, where is she? Where’s my wild bunny? Is she hiding behind you?”

Sonny was leaning over the countertop, long torso making it possible for him to almost – _almost_ – peek behind Rafael’s shoulder.

“Ya know, the only reason that the tickle monster had to come out is because your daughter refuses to get dressed,” he said pointedly.

He moved, farther and farther across the space that separated them until his nose bumped Rafael’s ear, “Just tell her to get dressed, and the tickle monster will go away.”

“I promise, love,” Rafael laughed, his own shoulders rising to block Elisa’s form from Sonny’s searching gaze. “I’m not hiding her! I have no idea where she’s wandered off to – “.

“My pajamas are more comfier!” Elisa proclaimed, her self-incriminating outburst muffled by the fabric of Rafael’s pants.

“Hah, I knew it! Get over here, little Miss Barba-Carisi, we’re gonna be late for brunch with auntie Liv if you don’t get dressed soon.”

As Sonny grabbed Elisa, her protests of, “No, daddy, stop! Go away tickle monster!” giggled out in between random tickles to her belly, Rafael swore he saw a flash of a little blond head round the corner of the hallway.

Which was _insane_ , and _ridiculous_ , and _clearly_ indicated that he needed more – and _stronger_ – coffee, because the only three people who lived in their home were currently gathered in the kitchen, engaged in a tickle battle to the death.

“Papi, ayúdame! Va a matarme con cosquillas!” Elisa gasped, her skinny arms wriggling out from beneath Sonny’s grasp as she strained against the forearms bracketed across her chest.

Bewildered, Sonny shot Rafael his signature glare, always managing to make his eyes sweeter than the look should allow.

“What did she just say, Rafi? Is she trying to con you into letting her wear her pajamas to Lafayette’s?”

“Actually, she said that you’re going to kill her with tickles. Which, seems to be a rather astute and accurate observation from our five-year-old, love,” Rafael smirked.

“Yeah, daddy, I’m astute!” Elisa said, poking her tongue out at Sonny as he finally released her from his hold, a kiss on the forehead notwithstanding.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re astute alright. Now go get dressed, Miss Astute, or else the tickle monster’s gonna make another appearance.”

And with Sonny’s parting words, Elisa hopped herself back down the length of the hallway, calling over her shoulder as she went, “See, daddy! I really am a real-life wild bunny!”

“Yeah, and a drama queen, too,” Sonny scoffed, turning on his heel to, presumably, insure that Elisa was holding up her end of the bargain. “And I wonder who she could’ve possibly gotten that little trait from, _Rafi_ – Oh! And there’s my beautiful baby boy!”

_No_.

Rafael couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly.

Baby boy?

Baby boy.

Not baby girl, but baby boy.

Baby boy.

But they didn’t have a baby boy, they had a baby girl, a _beautiful baby girl_ , but Sonny had just said “beautiful baby boy”, and he was leaning over, scooping someone up, cooing and smiling in the same way that he normally did with Elisa every passing minute of every day, in the way that he normally did with their _daughter_ , and it _had_ to be Elisa, and it was –

_A beautiful baby boy_.

A beautiful baby boy, blond, and blue-eyed, irises wide, and _bright_ , their coloring a perfect match to Sonny’s blue – the blue that Rafael had never found a name for.

Amongst his vast collection of one thousand dollar suits, ties, button downs, and sixty dollar socks, Rafael had never once found Sonny’s blue among any item of clothing.

He’d never once found Sonny’s blue on any swatch of paint, never once on any label of Elisa’s crayons, never once molded into the distinct shape of a wedding band, as he’d originally planned on gifting Sonny with before they’d settled on their more traditional gold rings.

He’d never once found Sonny’s blue.

Until now.

This beautiful little boy, with Sonny’s sandy hair and Sonny’s dimples, with Sonny’s smile that could brighten up even the darkest facets of oneself, who was grinning cheekily between them from his perch on Sonny’s hip, had Sonny’s blue.

“Did you crawl out of your crib again, peanut?” Sonny asked, bouncing the little boy in his arms with a few quick lifts of his bony shoulders.

He couldn’t have been older than a year, a year and a half at the very most, and his soft-spoken, “Yeah” was an answer filled with immeasurable innocence and the rough edges of a sleep that hadn’t quite released its hold.

The fact that the boy could talk was of no immediate surprise to Rafael; he and Sonny’s children had proven, time and again over, that they were the quickest of learners, a fact that had led to more than their family’s fair share of both elementary school classroom and playground jealously alike –

_And where the hell had “he and Sonny’s children” come from?_

He and Sonny had one child – _singular_.

Rafael didn’t even know this little boy’s _name_.

But there Sonny was, with a little boy pressed to the sure-warmth that Rafael knew so well to emanate from Sonny’s chest, and the image was as _fitting_ and _whole_ as it was _unfamiliar_ and _confusing_.

It was whole in the same way that it had been for Rafael to see Elisa in Sonny’s arms for the first time; he was her father, and she was his daughter, and the image of that truth and the separate pieces which had come together to form its unquestionable basis had just _fit_.

And this was that again, a million times over.

Sonny was this little boy’s father, and this sun-streaked haired, bright-eyed boy in the periwinkle and navy-striped onesie was he and Sonny’s child.

“So, _daddy_ , don’t you think it’s time that we bought someone his big boy bed? This is _only_ the fourth time that he’s climbed out of his crib this week.”

* * *

Upright, stock-still, bare chest heaving, eyes searching out for the light that had once been settled behind his closed eyelids and landing upon an overwhelming darkness instead.

He was wearing nothing save for a pair of loose, cotton sleep pants, yet every fiber and cord underneath Rafael’s skin felt as though it were straining against the fabric all the same.

Belatedly, he realized that he’d woken Sonny with his movements, the head that had once been lying on his chest now up and moving groggily from side to side.

“The hell, Rafi?” Sonny slurred, long fingers finding the fabric of his pants amongst the heavy tangle of sheets and comforter that was their bed. He tugged, an attempt at pulling Rafael back down to the comfort of their shared pillow. “You have a nightmare or something?”

He took a moment to allow himself to gather his bearings – the texture of soft blanket underneath him rather than the sturdy feel of marble countertop, Sonny’s warm skin beneath his hands rather than the press of a ceramic mug, what was _actual_ reality versus what had only _felt_ intensely real.

He threw his head back against the pillow, Sonny immediately re-assuming his position within Rafael’s limbs: head on Rafael’s chest, skinny arm thrown across the curve of his belly, legs twined and interlaced, toes brushing against each other’s calves in uneven intervals.

“Not a nightmare,” he finally admitted, head tilting until his words were ghosting quietly throughout the loose strands of Sonny’s curls. “A really good dream, actually. A dream that I wish…that I wish could be reality.”

“Why can’t it be if it was so good?” Sonny murmured; his lips were halved over Rafael’s skin, mouth open so that Rafael felt every breath that he gave deep within his own ribs.

He let himself feel Sonny’s exhale throughout his body once more.

“Because we had another baby.”

Rafael could tell that Sonny was smiling just from the set of his cheeks as they widened against him.

Sleepily, albeit, as the grin didn’t quite expand far enough to reach Sonny’s dimples, he knew.

“ _Really?_ ”

But he sounded awed all the same.

Like maybe, he liked the idea of that, too.

“Mhmm,” Rafael hummed, pressing his lips firmly to Sonny’s forehead as he spoke. “It was a little boy. He looked just like you, Sonny. He was so beautiful. And you were holding him, and he was smiling at us, and his smile was _just like yours_ , and – “.

He paused, shifted closer, somehow; Rafael wanted to be close to his husband, his _love_ , the man that he’d raised their first child with when he said this.

“And I think we should have another.”

Silence.

Only steady, even breathing filled their bedroom.

Darkness, and steady breathing.

Rafael found Sonny’s hand on his chest and enclosed it in his.

Sonny breathed.

Maybe, he’d try again in the morning.

* * *

"Umm, daddy. Can you help me?"

Turning away from the egg-soaked bread sizzling on the pan in front of him, Sonny was met with the sight of an adorably-frustrated and half-dressed Elisa: gray sweater dress pulled on neatly, off-white and scuffed Keds untied and loose on her feet.

"Well, first of all, bunny, they're on the wrong feet."

He tried to hide his snicker as he watched Elisa look down, realization washing over her features in waves before a patented Barba glare was aimed at the offending sneakers. 

She collapsed on the kitchen tile, throwing the right one off with a huff: "Stupid shoes."

"Hey," Sonny warned, flipping the bread as he turned down the heat on the stove, letting Elisa's promised French toast cook as he made his way towards his daughter, still hunched over in frustration on the floor. "What've me and daddy told you about that word?"

"It's not nice," she grumbled, offering a foot to Sonny in defeat. He crouched down, meeting her halfway and beginning the formation of a two-eared bunny knot. "Can I say bad shoes, then?"

Chuckling, Sonny started on the other shoe's laces: "Yes, that's much nicer, bunny. I want you to quit getting so mad at yourself, though. I promise that you're gonna learn how to tie your shoes soon. Me and daddy will keep practicing with you every single night until you do."

Finishing with the left shoe's knot, he placed Elisa's foot gently back on the tile, leaning forward to kiss the tip of her nose.

"Now go brush your teeth and put your hearing aids in, okay? And then we'll have some of that French toast you wanted."

The idea of a sweet and syrupy - _and sticky_  - breakfast seemed to brighten Elisa up considerably, and she hopped up just at the same moment that Rafael appeared in the kitchen, suited up in a navy blue three-piece.

"Oh, hi, daddy! Did you know that we're having French toast for breakfast today?!"

"I did," Rafael replied, sneaking a grin in Sonny's direction; his husband was gathering Elisa up in his strong arms, kissing softly at her smiling cheek, and Sonny had to force himself to remember to turn the stove off before he burnt the last slices of Elisa's French toast.

"Daddy told me yesterday," Rafael continued, his voice barely above a murmur. "And it's because someone is the smartest little girl in her whole class and finished her reading log first."

Elisa ducked her chin, letting her forehead fall shyly onto Rafael's shoulder: "I'm not the smartest, daddy."

And then, mumbled into the fabric of his suit, "I still don't know how to tie my shoes."

Scoffing, Sonny began stacking the final two pieces of bread on a ceramic plate, already piled high with previously cooked slices made in honor of his daughter's academic feat. 

"That's only because you're smart like your daddy and clumsy like me," he said, walking the food to the kitchen table. Turning back to Rafael and Elisa, the latter still perched high in her daddy's arms, he brought a hand to Elisa's loose curls and tucked a stray strand behind an ear.

"You can read and spell all day, but when it comes to the type of stuff where you gotta use your hands, you and I get all mixed up."

"Objection, daddy! You're smart, too!" Elisa answered, little chest puffing up indignantly as she whipped her head and turned to find Rafael's amused gaze. "Tell daddy not to say that you and me are the only smart ones, papi!"

"It's true, love," Rafael started, his focus solely on Sonny and pulling him closer by the back of his narrow waist. "You're incredibly intelligent, my soon-to-be  _sergeant_."

"Yeah, daddy, see! You're gonna be like uncle Mike soon! You just have to pass your test!" Elisa proclaimed, and she leaned across the broad set of Rafael's chest, took Sonny's face in each of her tiny hands, and placed her own kiss to the very tip of his nose.

Sonny felt warmth ripple throughout his chest like waves coming into a shore,  _and God_ , he'd never allowed himself to even  _imagine_  that he'd ever feel a love like the one that he felt for the man and little girl in front of him.

He wished he could go back and tell the him that had thought that he would never get  _this_  what he knew now.

The him that had thought, if he happened to find his love within a man, that he'd never get to have  _this_.

He'd tell the him then,  _"You're gonna have a good man. He's gonna ask you to marry him, because he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. He's gonna tell you that he wants to raise a child with you, too. They're both gonna be your whole world._

_"And you're gonna get everything that you ever wanted."_

Sonny could never ask Rafael for anything more.

He didn't need to.

He already had it all.

Squirming, – because she’d _clearly_ been still for far too long – Elisa declared, "Okay, I need to brush my teeth so we can eat breakfast! Can you put me down now, daddy?"

With Elisa's impatient limbs more impeding than aiding in the process, Rafael deposited her back onto the floor, her dress miraculously coming out of the affair with minimal wrinkles. 

Just as it seemed that she was heading down the hallway once more, she stopped short and turned back to face them both: "And don't start eating without me, okay, you two?"

Sonny didn't think that a pointed and aimed index finger had ever looked more adorable.

No more response to be had than a few quick, nods of the head, and Elisa was finally on her way to the bathroom, and one step closer to her prized French toast.

Sonny sighed, his eyes locked firmly on Elisa's retreating form as he spoke, "She's a drama queen, Rafi. And you know who she got that from? Oh, that's right. Yo – ".

"Yes, yes, me, she got it from me," Rafael grumbled, and before he could continue to tease, Rafael's large palm was on Sonny's forearm, pulling him closer until their hips and chests had collided.

One hand planted firmly on Sonny's waist, the other on the back of his neck, and Rafael was kissing Sonny like it was his way of coming up for air.

He took the moment to revel in anything and everything that was  _him_ : the strong hands, the warm lips, the way that he held Sonny close, like his body was precious and would give way if  _he didn't dig his fingers in_   _tight enough_. 

He held Elisa like this, too, and every time that Sonny was witness to the image, he found home.

He'd found it now, too.

Rafael's arms had always been that for Sonny.

"So," he paused, his lips finding their rest on the stubble peppering Sonny's jaw. "Do you remember what I told you last night? After I woke up?"

Sonny leaned forward for one more kiss, a lingering press of lips that he laughed his answer into.

"Gonna be real honest here, Rafi, I was pretty out of it when you woke up from that nightmare that you claimed wasn't a nightmare, even though I thought there for a second I was gonna have to get the bat out from under the bed."

He paused, running over the moment from the night before; "But, no, I don't remember. Why?"

Rafael smiled, and it was that grin, that  _hint_  of a smile that always managed to make Sonny's chest tight, the one where his laugh lines and the crinkles around his green eyes showed.

Sonny remembers when those lines hadn't been so defined.

He liked to think that he'd helped with that.

And Elisa a little, too.

Wordlessly, Rafael led him to the kitchen table, letting Sonny take a seat before pulling his own close enough so that their knees and thighs bumped.

"I have something I want to tell you," he started, both of his larger palms coming up to envelope Sonny's in their strength and warmth. "Something I want you to think about."

He brought Sonny's hand to his lips then, a soft kiss pressed to the rigidness of cool metal.

"You know you can tell me anything, Rafi."

Sonny wanted to soothe him, wanted to quell whatever nervousness that he knew Rafael was trying - and failing,  _miserably_  - to hide.

There was the tapping, the endless up-and-down motion of his foot that was typically hidden by a heavy oak desk or muffled by the sheets on their bed.

Or the way that he was playing with Sonny's ring, twisting it, spinning it around and around, faster and faster, until Sonny started feeling friction from the movements hot against his skin.

"Whatever you're scared to tell me, Rafi, you don't have to be. You know that. So just say it, okay?"

Rafael huffed out a breath, his fingers tightening around Sonny's own as he did so. He smiled, and his lips were pulled a little tight and his foot hadn't ended its tapping, but Sonny's words seemed to have struck their chord all the same.

"It has to do with the  _dream_  that I had last night. And why I was so distracted at dinner. And story time. And the entirety of the evening," he admitted. 

He nodded, giving Rafael the reassurance that Sonny knew he needed in order to continue; Rafael was so perceptive, so _in tune_  with him as a partner, and he always searched out Sonny's face for any tells of discomfort when it came to conversations like this.

Sonny wasn't quite sure what  _this_  was, but still.

He felt Rafael's love for him at its peak in those moments.

"The dream that I had last night, it was brought on by something that I'd been thinking about all day. Because of something that I overheard our daughter saying, actually. Telling Carmen about how much she wants a little brother or sister."

Sonny could not breathe.

_Would not_  breathe.

_Was he_  - 

"And I'd never even  _considered_  the idea before. Not once since we've adopted Elisa have I thought about having another child. Because  _she's perfect_ , Sonny, and you know that as well as I do. But for some reason, when I heard our daughter talking about it, it just...it made me reconsider  _everything_."

_Was he_  - 

"That's why I was so quiet last night. I didn't want to risk telling you on the off chance that I woke up this morning and panicked, and chalked the whole idea up to sleep deprivation and the stress of this case. 

"Because I knew that would hurt you. And that's the last thing that I ever want to do."

_Was he_  - 

"But then I had this  _dream_ , Sonny. At first, you were just playing with Elisa in it. You were chasing her, as the tickle monster, because she wasn't getting dressed. But you found her, of course, because she hid behind my legs like she always does, and you were tickling her, and she was being dramatic about it, like she always is, and I  _swear_  that my eyes never left you two.

But then I saw it. This little, tiny, flash of blond hair."

_Was he_  -

"Even in a dream, I was certain that I'd imagined it. Because it was only us three. Sonny, Rafael, and Elisa. But then it wasn't three. It was four."

_He was choking up, and was he_  -

"You picked up this beautiful, baby boy, love. This  _beautiful_  boy who looked just like you. He had your blue eyes and your smile.

"You were holding him in your arms, safe to your chest, and - and it was like I was watching you hold our baby girl for the first time all over again."

_He was smiling at Sonny, and now Sonny's eyes were watering because he was sure that this couldn't be real, and was he_  -

"We were that little boy's parents. You were his father, and so was I, and he was Elisa's little brother, and it felt wrong that he wasn't there when I woke up."

_He was_. 

He'd all but said the words.

Sonny's heart was pounding, and he was dangerously close to losing it,  _but this was real, he wasn't imagining it - he was saying it._

"Are you saying that you wanna have another baby, Rafi?"

Rafael's eyes were telling the whole story.

The one that Sonny didn't need the answer to.

Happy, and watery, and full of a love that knew no ends.

"I'm saying that I wanna have another baby, Sonny. With the man that I love."

Sonny finally broke.

_You're gonna get everything you ever wanted._

_You're gonna get everything you ever wanted and so much more._

This man _, this incredible man,_ wanted to have another child with him.

The man that he loved wanted them to have another baby.

He wanted their little family to grow. 

To expand.

To be four instead of three.

Not because three was less, but because four was just  _a little bit more_.

A little bit more love.

A little bit more happiness.

A little bit more joy.

A little bit more life added to the home that they'd built together.

Not less.

Not because he and Elisa weren't enough. 

But because four was just a little bit more.

He hadn't thought he could move, but somehow, his hand made its way to the back of Rafael's neck.

He didn't have to tug very hard before they were breathing each other in.

_Breathing, in love, smiling, happy_ , and Sonny had been happy for almost ten years now because of Rafael, and it wouldn't stop being that way any time soon.

"You remember what you said to me, Rafi, after we first found out that we were gonna be able to adopt Elisa? How you said your heart kept having to make room for things? How it had to make room for me and her?" 

Rafael nodded, eyes shining, his palms flat on Sonny's cheeks.

Just like the first time.

Thumbs gentle.

Catching tears and wiping them away.

"It's my turn now, Rafi.”

Rafael was looking at him like he wasn't quite sure that he was real. 

The feeling was mutual.

He brought his lips to Sonny's forehead and breathed a sigh that Sonny recognized as relief.

"We'll tell Elisa this weekend, then. We'll figure out a way to make it special."

He paused, lips light in their presses against Sonny's skin.

"And we'll probably need to talk about moving, too, love. For starters, we'll need another bedroom. And this apartment isn't nearly big enough for two kids."

_Two kids_.

Sonny burrowed himself a little bit farther into Rafael's chest at the thought.

Two kids to jump into their bed at seven-thirty in the morning on their weekends off, two kids to call them both "daddy", two kids to buy Christmas and birthday presents for, two kids to hold, two kids to kiss, two kids to _love_.

"Whatever we need to do to make this happen, Rafi. We'll do it together, just like we always have."

* * *

The key was only halfway in the lock, not angled in the slightest, and already Rafael could hear Elisa's excited gasps from the interior of the apartment. 

Somewhere in between, "I think my daddies are home, abuelita!", Sonny's chuckles, and the feeling of a warm palm spread across his back, he finally managed to get the door cracked with minimal key-jiggling - and  _God_ , Rafael was happy that a move out of this apartment was on the horizon. 

Just a few loose ends to tie up, and their family would find itself in the confines of a cozy, little brownstone, in a  _real_  neighborhood, – or as much of a neighborhood as Manhattan had to offer – that didn't rest within the lines of a cityscape.

"Daddy! Papi!"

Elisa was posted at the coffee table, legs crisscrossed and eyes wide, her crayons discarded across the wood as she jumped at the far more necessary task of tackling he and Sonny in a hug.

"There's my little bunny!" Rafael greeted, strong arms reaching down and scooping Elisa up into the safety of his chest. "Did you have fun with abuelita today?"

He smirked, meeting Lucia's quirked eyebrow in a classic Barba standoff; she rose from the couch, approaching he and Elisa at a slow stride as she did so.

"As if she could have anything  _but_  fun with me. Isn't that right, cariño?"

"Of course, we had fun, abuelita!" Elisa answered, her grin bright and happy as she motioned towards the TV. "See, daddy, we even started watching  _The Sound of Music_ while I colored _."_

Rafael glanced at the TV, an image of the seven Von Trapp children and a young Julie Andrews lighting up the screen; "Ah, my favorite. Have you gotten to the part where Maria sings 'My Favorite Things'?" 

Eyebrows furrowed, Elisa chose to forge ahead and ignore the inquiry, "I thought you said your favorite was  _Singin' in the Rain_?"

He shrugged teasingly, then conceded to Elisa's argument with a quick press of lips to her cheek.

"As usual, you are right, bunny. But, this one is a close second."

Giggling, Elisa placed her hands on his cheeks, green looking into green, and every time that she did that, Rafael swore that she held the whole of his heart in between the span of her two little palms.

"I'm always right, daddy," she said, inching forward until her nose could brush against his own. She pushed an index finger into his chest, poking against the fabric of his polo, "And you're silly for trying to trick me like that."

"What do I tell you, Rafi, she's gonna be smarter than you," Lucia chuckled, her purse and coat already gathered in the midst of he and Elisa's exchange. 

She moved on to Sonny then, the affection which she harbored for her son-in-law given away by a kiss on the cheek. She pulled back, glancing between he and Sonny pointedly.

"Smarter than the both of you  _combined_ , in fact."

With a laugh, Sonny squeezed her shoulder, his smile soft and good-natured as he agreed, "I won't even _try_ to deny that one. And thanks for watching her today, Lucia, me and Rafi really appreciate it."

"Please," she waved him off, turning her attention to Elisa once more. "As if it is ever any trouble to spend time with my granddaughter."

Lucia kissed Elisa's forehead, her final goodbye whispered into skin as she said, "I love you, mi pequeña. Be good for your papi and your daddy the rest of the night, okay?"

Nodding so that her ponytail tickled Rafael's cheek, Elisa proclaimed, "I promise, abuelita! Te amo!"

Rafael was quick to place his own kiss on his mother's cheek, the presence of Elisa still in his arms preventing him from offering her anything more. 

"Thank you, again, mami," he said, his own gratitude needing to be expressed before she walked out the door, before she made the trek back to her own apartment in the Bronx. "I'll call you in the morning, okay?"

Because she knew,  _of course_  Lucia knew.

Rafael felt as if he were physically incapable of withholding information from his mother at times.

That morning had been one such instance, after his mother had arrived at ten o'clock sharp, her eyes narrowed and set as she'd approached the kitchen counter and asked, "So what exactly  _are_  you and Sonny doing today? You never call me at such short notice for a date."

She'd come prepared, and Rafael had known immediately that he was going to lose.

Still, he'd tried to redirect anyways.

"We're just running a few errands, mami, that's it. Nothing to be worried about."

He'd even thrown in a  _smile_.

And still, she'd seen right through his facade.

"And Elisa can't come with you while you run these errands because...?"

Rafael had sighed, set his coffee down, pinched the bridge of his nose while his mother had cackled across from him, and he'd all but made her swear on top of a stack of Bibles that under  _no circumstance_ were she to tell Elisa before he'd finally given in to her gaze. 

Reluctantly, albeit, –  _more_  than reluctantly – he'd said, "Mami...Sonny and I have decided to adopt again."

There’d been a pause, a small bout of silence before she'd clapped her bony hands over her mouth, and gasped, and it had been the exact reaction that Rafael  _had not_  wanted, because Elisa could've walked into the kitchen at any moment, but then, Lucia had said, "Oh, Rafi...I'm going to be a grandmother again?"

She'd sounded stunned, and had an expression on her face that was somehow something even more than awe, and he'd thought that, maybe, that reaction from his mother had been a little bit worth the risk.

Lucia had never thought she'd have this, and he couldn't blame her.

He knew the feeling all too well.

So, he'd kept it simple: he'd smiled at his mother, more sweetly than he'd realized he'd known how, and replied, "Yes, mami. There's going to be another little Barba-Carisi running around to call you abuelita."

Too overwhelmed to do anything more, she'd stayed silent, dabbing offhandedly at the rims of her eyes with a handkerchief and nodding along as Rafael had revealed to her he and Sonny's true intentions for the day.

They'd been planning on hitting every shop within a ten-mile radius of their apartment, their specific names and locations taken down in a note on Sonny's phone after a quick Google search for "infant" and "retail" "in Manhattan" had provided them with a number of hits.

The goal was simple: procure a gift for Elisa which would inform her of her impending ascent into big sisterhood. 

It hadn't been simple – they'd ventured into at least fifteen different stores, Rafael was sure of it – but they'd finally agreed on an item after sending photos of their top two choices out to the Manhattan SVU group chat.

 

_(Rollins: Ooohhh, the first one!! Elisa would love that!!!)_

_(Liv: Gotta go with Carisi's pick on this one. Sorry Raf.)_

_(Fin: I dunno, Barba's pick is kinda nice too. I could see the lil peanut wearing that.)_  

_(Dodds: Isn't Elisa's favorite color purple?? The first one's purple.)_  

_(Barba: I can't believe you all just let my husband pick out an item of our daughter's clothing.)_

 

Sonny hadn't stopped gloating the entire drive home.

He also hadn't stopped singing, "We're having another baby, Rafi! Another beautiful baby!" or kissing at Rafael's knuckles at each red light that they’d hit, but.

That was entirely beside the point.

The point was how incredibly  _happy_  he knew that the little girl in his arms was going to be when she heard the news.

And with his mother having finally taken her leave, Sonny was already forging ahead, the pale purple-wrapped package that he'd left hidden by the door now held between two large hands.

"Hey, baby," he said, moving forward and presenting the present to Elisa's thoughtful gaze. "Me and daddy got something for you while we were out."

Sonny tentatively handed the box off into her little fingers, her green eyes scrutinizing and searching the paper as if the answer to the unexpected gift lay somewhere between its taped folds and creases.

"But it's not Christmas," she eventually piped up, an incredulous look shot at Sonny before being redirected towards Rafael. "Or my birthday, or Valentine's Day, or Easter – ".

"We know that, bunny," Rafael answered, his light chuckles reflected in the gleaming blue of Sonny's eyes. 

Removing Elisa from his hip then, he plopped her down so that her onesie-covered bottom was safely nestled between he and Sonny on the couch. He nudged the package with an index finger, urging her on to peel back the paper and dive into the gift which it held underneath.

"It's a 'just because' gift, bunny. Now, come on, open it."

Still appearing a little more than unconvinced, Elisa began tearing back the paper, he and Sonny exchanging looks of unabashed excitement from across the back of the couch as the wrapping slowly fell to the carpet, inch by inch.

Luckily, she didn't seem to notice; she'd reached the cardboard box which laid underneath the surface of the paper, and was already gently lifting its lid to reveal the surprise which laid hidden beneath a swath of ivory tissue paper.

"Can you read what it says, baby?" Sonny inquired gently, his voice as soft as Rafael knew the fabric to be of the pastel purple t-shirt which Elisa was currently running the tips of her fingers along.

"Well, I know that the first word is 'big'," she replied confidently, a nod of the head accompanying her answer. "B-I-G. Big!"

"But," and then she paused, letting an index finger fall underneath the first 's' at the beginning of the following word. "I think I need to sound this one out."

Her eyes followed the curves and the sharp lines of each letter, a "sss" and an, "ih", another "sss" and a "ti" escaping from between her parted lips until she'd reached the end of the word, a jumble of sounds left in her wake to sort through.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Rafael watched as the pieces began to come together; she looked confused, then uncertain, bewilderment taking over last as her ponytail made its way from right to left in an attempt to find he and Sonny's faces.

"Big...," and Elisa's voice was barely that of a whisper, barely intelligible when compared to her usual excited ramblings, and her eyes were so very wide as she wrapped each of her hands around he and Sonny's thumbs laying on the upholstery of the couch beside her.

"Big…. _big sister_? Am I...am I gonna be a big sister, daddies?" 

Sonny nodded, his curls loosening and tumbling in front of his eyes with the urgency of the movement.

The love in his voice was of the truest kind as he said, "Me and daddy are gonna adopt again. You're gonna be a big sister, baby."

Rafael had seen Elisa cry more times than he liked to keep track of; it was inevitable, as the daughter of Sonny Carisi, that she move like anything less than a baby giraffe discovering it's legs for the very first time.

There was the broken arm that Rafael himself still hadn't recovered from, the head bump against the corner of the coffee table that had been the result of an impromptu dance session with daddy, –  _not_  papi – the countless scraped-up knees and cut-up elbows after Sunday hopscotch sessions at grandma and papa's on Staten Island.

But this was so much different – and  _so much more_ – than any of those times combined.

She was somehow beautiful and sweet, even with tear tracks staining the pink of her cheeks, her happy grin in stark contrast with the marks making their way down her quivering chin.

"Can we have a family hug?" she asked.

It was simple.

It was  _beautiful_.

It was perfect. 

He and Sonny were holding their baby girl in their arms, her body nestled safely between them, and soon three would become four, and everything was  _perfect_.

She was  _happy_ , and  _smiling_ , and  _beautiful_ , and everything was  _perfect_.

Elisa then sniffled, rubbing her cheek against the shirtsleeve of Sonny's button down in order to wipe away her tears.

"So," she pulled back, face suddenly set and serious as her palms rested warmly over the tops of each of their hands.

"Am I getting a baby brother, or a baby sister?"

* * *

They laid there, holding each other, bodies aligned and limbs tangled like the two halves of a matching set.

He could feel Rafael beginning to shift against him, most likely an attempt at inching towards his bedside table and retrieving something to clean them up with.

"No, no, don't move. Not yet."

Sonny pressed his palms more firmly to the skin of Rafael's back, one hand wedged in the space between his shoulder blades and the other resting low on his spine, holding every inch of him close to Sonny's own body.

They were sticky, their skin slick with a layer of sweat, and enough heat pooling between their bellies to house a furnace. 

Rafael was still inside of him.

He took Sonny's whisper as a cue to reconnect their mouths, to let their lips and tongues fall open to one another,  _only_  one another, again and again.

Even though they'd both already finished, Sonny couldn't help the way that his thighs tightened against the curve of Rafael's hips, the way that he locked his legs around the lower portion of his husband's body, the way that he pulled him in still deeper. 

Sonny just needed to feel him. 

Needed to feel Rafael filling up his body, needed to fill that,  _yes_ , this man was his, that,  _yes_ , it was him who was inside of Sonny, that,  _yes_ , it was him who was pressed up against him, holding him, sucking kisses from his lips with every breath that he took, like Sonny was his air.

Rafael was his, so Sonny figured that the sentiment couldn't be too far off.

"Are you trying to suggest that we go for round two?" Rafael questioned, his smile and a breath of laughter pressed into Sonny's lips. "Because I'm an old man, love. I'm not the spry forty-year-old you had that hero-worship crush on. You'll kill me before either one of us is finished."

Sonny squeezed him tighter, lifted his chin to kiss firmly at Rafael's forehead, eyes glancing over the beads of sweat still gathered along the sharp edge of his hairline.

"You may not be that spry forty-year-old, Rafi, but you're the man that I love and the father of our child. And both of those things mean so much more to me than that."

Moving until he had found Rafael's eyes, his hand trailed a path along the length of his back, only coming to an end once Sonny was running long fingers through his still-damp hair.

"Can you believe that there's gonna be another little one running around here soon enough?" he murmured, his question more a statement of his own true disbelief than any form of actual wondering. 

Blue met green then, and Sonny jerked his head until their noses bumped, rubbing them together gently: "Another little  _Barba-Caris_ _i_. Another baby to love, and to hold, and to teach Eskimo kisses to."

Rafael hummed, and it was the  _happiest_  sound that Sonny had ever heard, it's only match found in Elisa's bright and silly giggles.

"Another baby to read bedtime stories to. Another baby whose knees we'll have to give kisses to when they scrape them up playing hopscotch at grandma and papa's house," Rafael laughed, continuing their back-and-forth of kisses with his own to Sonny's flushed cheek. "Another baby to – ".

"Daddy! Papi! Open up, it's me, Elisa!"

Elisa was, quite literally,  _pounding_  against their bedroom door, in the same way that Sonny normally did when he was five seconds away from kicking one down on searches with Rollins and Dodds.

"Another baby to do  _that_ ," Rafael finished, and the laughter that burst forth from Sonny was loud and affectionate as his husband's forehead collapsed forward onto his chest.

They finally broke apart, Sonny's body empty but his heart full as Rafael threw a solitary wet wipe at his face; he quickly wiped his stomach down, discarded the rag into the wastebasket that they kept by their dresser, and pulled on his forgotten pair of sweats and a favorite, loose-fitting Harvard t-shirt.

Rafael still smiled, almost ten years later, every time he saw Sonny in that ill-fitting, ratty old thing. 

Just like he was smiling now, from the comfort of their bed, sprawled out in his navy sleep pants and a cotton shirt, looking for all the world like Sonny was the only thing that he could see.

Sonny thanked God, every chance that he got, for that day that he stumbled into the precinct and met the man who would change his life.

The man who had taught him what it felt like to truly be brave, to face yourself and not be scared when you discovered what was looking back at you.

The man who had made him feel so incredibly loved from the very first day, from the very first time that he'd taken Sonny's face in his hands, and whispered, "No one's ever made me feel this way before, Sonny. I don't think I've ever loved anyone before you."

Every time that they touched, every time that they talked, every time that they kissed, Sonny felt loved, and even when Rafael hadn't talked to him for almost an entire day a year into their marriage because Sonny had misplaced his engagement ring, the antique that had been his abuelita's, Sonny had still felt loved, and he'd never believed that love could be truly unconditional until this.

And he still felt like their life together was only just beginning.

"Papi! Daddy! I really need you to please let me in  _right now_! I need to tell you something!"

Once Sonny had finally unlocked the door, there Elisa stood: hair sleep-tousled and a polka-dotted sock missing from her left foot, because somehow, some way, he and Rafael's daughter always managed to lose one in her sleep almost nightly.

Bright-eyed, she proceeded to push past Sonny, climbing on top of their bed so that she was nestled comfortably between a tangle of sheets. 

She turned, making sure to consider them both before proclaiming, "I know what we should name the new baby!"

Sonny made his way back towards them, Elisa having already wiggled herself so that her head was laying comfortably against Rafael's chest, her tiny feet depositing themselves into his lap once he'd climbed back into bed.

"Oh, yeah? And what are we naming him? Elsa? Olaf?" Sonny teased, his fingers brushing lightly along the arch of her bare foot. 

"Nope!" Elisa paused, her eyes comically wide as she attempted to build the anticipation for her forthcoming announcement; only her inability to stay completely still, given away by the rapid taps of her toes against Sonny's thigh, truly portrayed how antsy she was underneath the surface.

After five more successive taps to Sonny's leg, she sat up, better to gauge their reactions, he guessed, as she immediately began searching out each of their faces before declaring, "We should name the new baby Oliver!" 

As soon as Elisa said it, Sonny found himself already growing attached to the name; it was elegant but unique, like Elisa's, and it fit considering that Sonny had already made it clear to Rafael from day one that he would not, under any circumstances, name their son Dominick. 

His kid would not be dealt the unfortunate hand of having to be referred to as "Sonny Jr." for the rest of his life.

Rafael seemed to consider it, his hand coming up to sweep through the loose, tangled waves of Elisa's hair: "Where did you come up with that name, bunny?"

"Well, I kinda got out of bed after you and daddy tucked me in. So I could look through my books to see if I could find a name for the new baby. And since I have a special name, 'cause I'm named after your abuelita, daddy, my new baby brother should have a special name, too. And if it's picked out by his big sister, that's pretty special, right?"

He and Rafael were staring at each other by the time that she was finished.

He knew that they were both thinking the same thing.

It wasn't her name that was special.

It was  _her_. 

It was her, and her mind, her _beautiful_ mind and her innocent heart, every part of her filled with love and always drawing the most unsuspecting in with open arms. 

First, it had been he and Rafael.

Then, it had been others: her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, her cousins, her nanny, and even  _Rita Calhoun_ , for God's sake.

And now, it was her impending baby brother.

Elisa loved with a love that knew no bounds, that knew no limitations of who it could reach. 

Whether it was Miss Mayweather down the hall, who brought over freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for Elisa, specifically, yet couldn't remember he or Rafael's name; or their building's doorman, Jimmy, who Elisa gifted with a hug every morning on their walks out to school. 

Whereas he and Rafael had to make room, Elisa always had an empty space.

"I think that that's the perfect name for your brother, bunny. And you picking it out makes it the most special that it could possibly be," Rafael whispered, pulling her forward until his lips had met her forehead and she was smiling happily down at him from above. 

As he ended their embrace, Elisa laid her head back down against her daddy's chest, her breaths coming soft and even as she took Sonny's hand and interlaced their fingers.

"What do you think, daddy? Do you like the new baby's name?"

Sonny couldn't help himself; he brought her fingers to his mouth and blew a raspberry to Elisa's tan knuckles, her lighthearted giggles and Rafael's adoring smile worth the effort.

"'Course I like it, bunny. I  _love_  it. Elisa and Oliver Barba-Carisi. The best babies that any two daddies could ever ask for."

With a yawn, Elisa nodded, maneuvering herself yet again so that she was equally snuggled between them; Sonny took the cue and flicked off the desk-side lamp to his right, carefully laying back so as to not disturb her position amongst the sea of blankets.

Carefully, he turned his head to take in the sight of the man and the little girl beside him before finally closing his eyes. 

Elisa, her eyelids fluttering with each breath, her mouth somehow parted in a sweet smile even in sleep.

Rafael, staring at her sleeping form, just as he was doing.

Her eyes flew open one last time –  albeit, heavy-lidded – but the sheer joy in her voice could never be masked by the thick haze of sleep.

"We're gonna be the best family ever. Daddy, daddy, Elisa, and Oliver."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO HEY GUYS.
> 
> SORRY IT TOOK ME SO FREAKING LONG TO UPDATE! LIFE AND SUCH!
> 
> Also, I do have to make a major shoutout to my best frand Kat who pretty much convinced me to add another Barba-Carisi to the family! She's also the one who came up with the inspiration for the dream sequence that you saw from Rafael, so she deserves major kudos here as well! 
> 
> I hoped you liked the chapter!! Let me know what you thought below! <3


	4. Chapter 4

"Are you serious right now, Rafi? It's December first. Get up!"

It was December first and Rafael was sitting cross-legged on a third of their sofa, laptop perched between the crooks of his knees, an index finger aimlessly circling the rim of a coffee-stained cup to his left.

It was eight o'clock in the morning on December first and the powder blue sky greeting them through the halfway point of a sliding glass door was just beginning to reacquaint the city with its yearly dusting of white, and Rafael was reviewing  _house listings_.

For what was - by Sonny's rough estimate - the twenty-ninth time in that week alone.

Sonny's husband did nothing by halves, and the latter portion of that statement had become even more unequivocally true in the shadow of the adoption application that had been processed and notarized, waiting on Miss Jennifer Mead's desk for a business morning-Monday review.

And seven days was ample time in which to allow Rafael to become a man obsessed.

Lunch breaks, coffee breaks, playtime breaks – if Rafael's mind wasn't occupied, his hands were, the keyboard of his laptop and its respective clacking a constant fixture underneath nimble fingers. 

Sonny knew, of course, what had possessed Rafael to become nothing short of infatuated with the pricing of three identical – " _similar_ , Sonny" – 1930's brownstones and their concurrent availability, and that knowledge had Sonny wishing that it wasn't so easy for him to read the lines etched into his husband's face.

"Give me fifteen minutes, love? Twenty at the most. I'm talking to an online realtor who said that she might know of a few more properties that we can look over next weekend."

Rafael's gaze remained trained firmly on the digital display, his warm skin glowing in the white light of a housing website that Sonny's own eyes had become all too familiar with over the previous week; the image had been Sonny's goodnight kiss on the evenings in which he was lucky enough to fall into bed at the same time that Rafael was sitting up in it, fingers tapping away.

Glancing down at his socked feet – white and candy cane red-striped, a pair of Rafael's – Sonny maneuvered his way around the coffee table, torso and gangly legs coming to fit snug against Rafael's body on the leather couch. 

He pressed a palm to Rafael's cheek, the one most illuminated by a coupling of the computer's silvery glare and the couch-side lamp.

"Will you look at me, Rafi? Please?"

Sighing, green met blue, and Sonny saw the carved-out lines and the bags for what he'd known they were: fear. 

Rafael was always  _so scared_.

He never thought that he did enough.

He never thought that who he  _was_  was enough.

Enough for Sonny.

For Elisa.

His life had become real estate properties and saving account balances all in the name of being  _enough_.

A Husband.

A Father.

A Protector.

A Provider.

He was holder of those titles, the textbook embodiment of whom those adjectives were designed to describe, but somehow, he couldn't reconcile the reflection with the inner image.

With firm fingers, Sonny stroked a path along the graying stubble peppering Rafael's jaw, the warm cheek underneath his palm pressing into the gentle touch.

_Believe me when I say that you're good._

_Believe me when I say that you're enough._

_Believe me when I say that you are my and your little girl's everything and more._

"You know that there's such a thing as over-proactivity, right, Rafi?"

For a moment, as his breath stilled and his eyes shut tight, cutting Sonny off from peering into his green, Sonny thought that Rafael might pull away; but his large hand was coming up to envelope Sonny's next, the sheer size of his palm making the pressure of Sonny's touch that much more solid against his skin.

"Are you saying that wanting to ensure that we have a house before adopting another child is being overly proactive?" he asked, plainly.

There was no bite in the inquiry, however; Sonny simply allowed himself to smile softer, to let his touch guide Rafael back home.

"I'm saying that taking one day off to decorate the house and spend some time with your husband and daughter won't make you a bad father in the eyes of our unborn child."

Rafael let his chin fall forward, landing and resting against the navy knit spread across his chest, what Sonny supposed was meant to be a self-deprecating chuckle escaping from between parted lips.

"It won't make you a bad father in my eyes, either. Or Elisa's, for that matter. I mean, she wants us to live in a treehouse. So, I don't think that the perfect brownstone is much of a concern for her, Raf – ".

He was cut off by  _his_  warmth,  _his_  strength,  _his_  lips, those incredible hands framing cheek, and jaw, and eye, Rafael kissing and breathing into his mouth.

They didn't always need words, especially when Sonny knew that Rafael was finally allowing himself to recognize a moment of rest.

Their foreheads opposite of one another, their intertwined fingers, the thumb holding steady over the outline of Sonny's wedding band - it was all enough.

Sometimes, it was even more.

"So," Sonny began, only reclining his torso far enough so that he could duck and sneak a kiss to the shaved, soft ends of hair lining the back of Rafael's ear. "You put on the Bing Crosby, and I wake up the princess?"

Rafael laughed, a  _real_  laugh, a booming one that took up space and Sonny's heart alike, a  _happy_  one that Sonny felt all the way down to the tips of his socked toes.

"Only if you promise not to sing."

Sonny couldn't even _pinky swear_ , as Elisa said, to that. 

"What? Why?" he scoffed, the mock betrayal worn on his features only amplified by the free hand that came to smack into his sternum. "You let Elisa sing. And you know for a fact that she's a worse singer than I am."

"Yes, but she's five, love. So, it's cute when she does it," Rafael answered, all sweet eyes and innocence as he led the hand clasped in his to the warmth of his lips.

The soft kisses pressed into the pale ridges and falls of Sonny's knuckles forced his next threat to err just south of tenderness: "What, and you don't think I'm cute? Guess I'm gonna have to sing so loud that the neighbors file a noise complaint, then."

When Rafael's green eyes flicked owlishly upwards, Sonny should've known.

"You already force them to do that every night when we're in bed."

A lick of heat curled upwards along Sonny's spine, its intensity magnified as they both rose from the couch and Rafael feigned innocence at the pat he'd placed on Sonny's ass as they stood: "What? I'm only trying to help move you along, love. The princess is still asleep, you know."

With no more than a silent, parting grin, Sonny strode down the hallway and approached Elisa's door, the faint, yellow glow of her bunny nightlight almost swallowed whole by the sun rising and greeting her through her window and into the new day.

Sonny moved to sit carefully by her sleeping form, gentle fingers coming up to pull back the lavender folds of comforter, just enough to reveal pink cheeks and parted lips, and a little chest rising and falling with the rhythm of sleep.

"Good morning, bunny," he whispered, impossibly low, her tangled brunette locks a curtain Sonny pulled back to the fluttering open of eyelids. "Do you know what day it is?"

He watched as she tried to adjust, first to the light crisscrossing over her comforter-covered legs, then to his voice and the stillness that it had broken. She knuckled lazily at her eyes, then nudged Sonny's thigh with a toe, her tiny feet wiggling and making excited waves underneath ivory sheets.

"It's December first, daddy! Which means Christmas, and Santa, and daddy's special cookies!"

He chuckled, Elisa having already scooched herself into his lap for the daily exchange of "good morning" hugs and kisses; the pale pink and gray pajamas that Sonny's palms settled on felt smooth against his work-calloused skin, and he gave a "just because" press of lips to Elisa's permanently blushed-over cheek.

"Oh, the house will definitely feel like Christmas once we're through with it. And we'll even put up that little tree that me and daddy bought you last year for your room, yeah? How does that sound, bunny?"

Nodding in silent agreement, she clarified with two skinny arms thrown around Sonny's neck as he pulled her into the safe confines of his chest and stood from the bed: "Sounds great, daddy! Can we put it next to my bed, on my little table?!"

"'Course." Three steps away from the door, he paused, running long fingers through the dark curls he so meticulously and tenderly brushed out every morning, careful not to pull or yank. "I want you to give daddy extra love this morning when you see him, okay?"

Sonny wished he'd chosen his words more carefully as soon as they'd left his mouth: Elisa's green eyes were alight, alert, Rafael's own distress from halfway across the apartment mirrored in the way that her fingers tightened instinctively on the collar of Sonny's Henley. 

"Why? Is daddy sad?" she questioned, voice hushed and contained, close to the minimal space between she and Sonny's bodies, eyes cast downwards as she fidgeted with dark fabric. "Does daddy need extra Elisa love 'cause  _I_  made him sad?"

"No, baby, no, of course not," Sonny kissed her hair in succession with the route that he padded back down the hall, stopping a few feet short of the living room in which he heard the familiar rustling of protective tissue paper.

"He's just a little worried about some things right now, that's all," he continued, trying to put a comforting gloss over both his words and the stare of his eyes. "And I know that getting some love from his beautiful bunny would make daddy feel a whole lot better."

Elisa appeared appeased, if the slackening hold on Sonny's shirt was any indication to go by; he knew though, that he wouldn't be out of the red until Elisa had heard the sentiment expressed by her papi himself.

And without further prodding, she wiggled away from Sonny and the uncertainty which loomed in the hall, running straight for her father's arms and the call of, "Buenos días, mi preciosa niña!" which followed. 

As Sonny followed Elisa's trail into the living room, he saw that Rafael had already made quick work of the cardboard storage boxes that Sonny had left, unattended and stacked by the foot of the couch, that morning.

Endearingly, he'd already started organizing their mass of decorations: separated tangles of lights were strewn across couch cushions, and Christmas tree ornaments had been unwrapped and freed from their paper confines and set on the glass of the coffee table.

And even more so capturing Sonny's heart, was the tangible and so very  _real_  sight of Rafael, holding their little girl tight in his arms.

Sonny recognized the low thrums of a Bing Crosby-sung "White Christmas" instantly, and the image of Elisa's palms framing the set of Rafael's cheeks and jaw clued him into the fact that she was being sung to already.

If there was one thing that Elisa knew how to get out of her daddy, it was a smile and a song.

His eyes, a mirror image of hers, held an affection that knew no bounds as he swayed, easily, with the pattern of each verse, his voice only high enough for their private performance of two.

He was smiling at her, _for her_ , just as everything that he did was for her;  _for them_ , so that they could have this life together.

Sonny had said it in jest only a handful of times in the five – almost six – years since they'd had Elisa: " _You're my baby daddy, Rafi_."

Always accompanied by a dopey grin, always met with a pinch on the inside of a thigh, or a full-bellied snort, Sonny only ever voiced the sentiment in the hazy afterglow of making love, when Rafael was still too heavy and sated from the slow press of their bodies to legitimize the seriousness of Sonny's statement.

For Rafael, it was an overly corny joke that Sonny only made when he was still high off of endorphins, when the sweat layering Rafael's own ribs was still slick on the inside of Sonny's thighs.

For Sonny, it was an absolute truth.

No matter how ridiculous the phrasing, Rafael was the father of his child.

He'd expressed the thought only a single instance before, to Bella, when they'd been lingering half-in, half-out of the kitchen in their parents' home the Christmas before, as they'd watched their husbands sprawled out and playing on the living room carpet with Elisa and Cara, Sonny's niece.

They'd been engaged in a tie-breaking round of "I Spy", cousins against daddies; Sonny remembers Elisa sticking her nose in Rafael's face, clumsily half-climbing into his lap as he'd been forced to brace himself against the floor, proclaiming, "I spy with my little eye something green, daddy!"

Only the presence of his younger sister at his shoulder had kept Sonny from publicly swooning as Rafael had feigned uncertainty, ticking off the most obviously-green items which decorated every festive corner of the room: the Christmas tree, the mistletoe hung by where the ceiling dipped to meet the top of his father's grand piano, the hair bow that tied off and signaled the end of Elisa's braid.

He'd finally given up the act after the pop of Elisa's fifth, "Nope!", tenderly framing her cheeks and chin with the protection of large palms.

"Is it our eyes, bunny?"

 _God, and the way that they'd both smiled_.

Sonny knew that that was why he was alive.

For those moments.

To see them holding onto each other.

To see love, to hear Elisa saying, "Good job, daddy, you got it right! The green is  _our_  eyes 'cause we have the same eyes! 'Cause I came out of you and daddy's love, so I look like you! We share eyes!"

Daddy-daughter shared temple kisses had come next, not to be outdone, however, by the scoff that Bella had unleashed somewhere directly to his left.

"Could you be any more smitten if you tried?" she'd asked, her words aimed downwards at the pool of merlot that she'd held in hand, an attempt to hide the smirk that had passed over her pink lips.

He'd blamed the blush that had come to seer across his cheeks on the headiness of his own glass of wine rather than any actual embarrassment; and he'd told Bella as much, throwing back his last sip of vintage Italian drink before saying, "He's the father of my child, Bells."

Her eyebrows, an even lighter shade of blonde and more expressive than his, had come to disappear underneath a curtain of artfully side-swept bangs – he'd never seen her look more like their mother. 

"It took you four years to figure that out?"

"That's not – you know that's not what I mean," and he would've borrowed from the mousse, teased her with it, still refrigerator-chilled and occupying space on the end corner of the dessert table, if not for the cashmere scarf that had been wound around Bella's neck, a paycheck and a half from Tommy hung loosely across Carisi-family bony shoulders.

He was better than that.

"Don't you ever feel that way with Tommy?" he'd continued, schooling his expression back into something that was soft and wandering; the effort was unneeded, though.

It was muscle memory when he looked at Rafael and Elisa.

"Don't you ever look at Tommy and think about how just... _proud_  you are to have picked him to raise a child with? 'Cause sometimes, when I look at Rafi, that's all that I can see."

And Bella – she'd seemed to have gotten it then.

Her features, too, had relaxed in a way that spoke of romantic and maternal love alike, a softening of the edges that more so had to do with a glance of Cara playing contentedly in Tommy's lap than the third glass of wine she'd downed. 

"Like, Rafi? I swear to you, Bella, the man never used to leave his office. Even after we got married, which was fine, 'cause nine times out of ten, I was working just as late the same nights he was. 

"But now that we have her? I'll come home at midnight and he's already been there, five, six hours, and he'll have his paperwork spread out all across the coffee table, and he'll be hunched over so that he can look at it - which, I  _know_  hurts his back.

"He could stay at his office. Sit in that fancy chair I got him that's got that spinal support padding in it, or whatever. But he doesn't. He comes home. All 'cause he wants to make her her dinner and read her her story before bed."

 _That's_  what he'd meant, just as it was what Sonny thought now.

He was protector and provider, husband and father.

He was everything.

"Daddy, can you stop staring at papi please so we can make him some breakfast? I already gave him extra love so now he needs some yummy food to feel even better!"

Elisa looked so  _pleased_  with herself, so absolutely tickled, with her cheeks pulled up in a complimenting toothy grin that Sonny couldn't find it within himself to be mad that she'd given his well-meaning intentions away.

And, well, her Carisi was showing: she'd already escaped Rafael's hold and toddled herself, pajama-footed into the kitchen, Sonny's ears more than his eyes picking up on the fact that she was now searching through the lowest refrigerator compartment for papi's favorite breakfast foods.

"' _Extra love_ ', hmm?" Rafael murmured, the soft presses of lips that he peppered high on Sonny's cheekbone in stark contrast to the strong loop of arms that had found itself around Sonny's waist.

He ducked his head, shy for having been caught, a chuckle and proceeding round of kisses from Rafael made all the more insistent by the downward diversion of Sonny's head as they followed their daughter's path side-by-side into the kitchen. 

"Stop kissing daddy please, papi! You're disteracting him, and if you keep disteracting him, he'll burn your food like he did to my pancakes!" 

And there was everything that Sonny worshipped – the wit, the sass, the expertly cocked eyebrow – about Rafael, wrapped up tight and made for them in the form of their baby girl.

 _And those hands on the hips_ – they alwaysdid Sonny in.

A five-year-old in pink and gray, bunny-appliquéd footie pajamas shouldn't have looked nearly so intimidating. 

But Elisa Rosalie  _Barba_ -Carisi?

The image was perfect, if not wholly expected.

"Daddy burned your pancakes?" Rafael questioned suddenly, mock exasperation dripping sweet like honey, slow and thick over each of his words. 

The bastard  _knew_ , he had been in the kitchen to witness the Friday Morning Breakfast Massacre.

"Yep, he did, daddy! 'Cause  _you_  tapped his butt! So,  _I_  had to eat Cheerios instead!"

And with the retreat of her index finger from their direction, she returned to pooling through the contents of the fridge, only pausing to brush a wild strand of hair from her eyes and motion towards Sonny.

"We'll make papi some sausage and eggs, okay, daddy? Now you get the ingredients, and I'll get the pans!"

With a dimply grin cast at his little chef, – _she'd said ingredients_! – Sonny promptly moved to follow his orders at the fridge, Rafael releasing his waist only to instead occupy a seat at the bar top from which he could look out onto the kitchen as Sonny and Elisa prepared him his feast. 

Sonny took to the task of acquiring the ingredients quickly, pulling a Styrofoam container of eggs and package of pre-prepared sausage links from the depths of the refrigerator, setting them on the marble counter just as he heard the clattering of stainless-steel from below him.

Chuckling, he turned his focus to Elisa: she'd managed, impressively, to retrieve two, full-sized pans from the heavy clutter of the cabinet, wiggled out from in between pasta strainers and a tea kettle to be set on the tile by her pink feet.

"Alright, baby girl, you wanna show daddy how big and strong your muscles are?" Sonny asked, a lopsided smirk set between two pink cheeks as he shot a glance full of playful determination down at Elisa, his own palms now resting firmly on a pair of bony hips.

Her excitement was tangible throughout the kitchen as she began bouncing, up and down on the balls of her pajama-covered feet, already placing her tiny hands at the ready on the metal handle of the pan. 

"Now, we've been working on this for awhile, daddy," Sonny added playfully, blue eyes bright and set on the fondness in Rafael's green. "I want you to watch just how strong our bunny is, okay?"

Long fingers spread and hands splayed, he offered both to Elisa: "Hand me the pan, bunny."

It was no effortless task – the base of the pan itself was almost the same length across as Elisa's torso; but, he and Rafael's bunny had a stubbornness that went unmatched. 

With a giant heave and a cry of, "See, papi, I'm strong!", Elisa managed to lift the pan just to the height of her own chest, Sonny swooping in easily to scoop the cookware up and onto one of the stove's burners. 

They still had one more to go, but Elisa was far too proud of her feat to assist in the lifting of the second pan; she was skipping, disappearing behind the bar top, reappearing with hands cupping Rafael's cheeks and body in his lap, her excited proclamation following short of a cheeky grin.

"I did it, papi, did you see!? All 'cause daddy's been helping me get strong! So now, I gots superpowers in my ears  _and_  my arms!"

"You gotta show daddy your muscles, too, bunny!" Sonny added quickly, the love in Rafael's gaze only further deepening at the image of their daughter, happy and inching away from him, only to flex her arms in just the way that Sonny had taught her one evening while playing superheroes in her bedroom. 

Her knuckles were curled, hands squeezed tight into two little fists, and Sonny thought her bent arms couldn't have looked any scrawnier; but Rafael's face was a mask of amazement all the same.

"See, I'm strong like you and daddy now, daddy! Now I can put away bad guys, too! And I can keep you and daddy safe like you keep me safe!"

How their five-year-old managed to knock their feet out from underneath them almost every time she opened her mouth, Sonny would never have the ability to fathom.

Almost a month ago, hushed and sleep-laden, she'd told them that she loved them "more than the stars, daddies", because, "My teacher says stars run out and have to go away sometimes. So, I love you even more than that, daddy and papi! 'Cause my heart never runs out!" 

She'd told them, a week into starting kindergarten, that, "I always say my prayers before I eat my lunch! After I tell God thanks for my sandwich, I ask him  _really_  nice if he'll keep you safe, daddy and papi! 'Cause you gotta catch the bad guys while I'm at school, so God has to keep you safe since I'm not there!"

In those moments, Sonny never knew what to say; not when Elisa fixed him with her wide-eyed, green gaze, not when she spoke with so much unabashed love in her words and her voice, not when it led him to remember that afternoon when they'd first brought her home, when she'd burrowed into his chest as they'd played on the floor, and he'd thought, that with her in his lap and his husband in the kitchen, his nose in her soft baby curls, that his life couldn't get any better. 

But it could, and it had, a thousand times over; every day, and every second that he had the privilege of loving the man and the little girl that had made him realize what it had all been for.

"Do you even know how special you are, bunny?"

Rafael was always the one to speak first, always the one to find his footing just a bit quicker amidst Elisa's sweet remarks and declarations; if Sonny hadn't known the man's tells, he would've thought that Rafael were scrutinizing a case file rather than gazing at their daughter.

But there was an affection there, a wonder, an astonishment that they both discovered solely within their baby girl, laid beneath the dark, furrowed brows and the curled upper lip that was absent in any setting that wasn't the confines of their home. 

Shyly, Elisa began toying with the wrinkled collar of Rafael's powder blue button-up, watercolor-stained fingers from the night before running along it's edges as she kept her eyes averted, unwilling to meet her father's gentle tone.

"I  _think_  I know. Least, sometimes I do."

Bringing her closer to him, Rafael placed his hands on either side of her face – warm, loving, safe palms coming to rest on round cheeks and familiar warm skin, and that Sonny watched Elisa relax into in just the same way that he always did.

"And do you know how much daddy and I love you? How happy you make our hearts?"

At that, Elisa nodded readily, loose, brown ringlets bouncing as the corners of Rafael's eyes crinkled, lifting cheeks and the set of lips into a grin that met the tenderness of his eyes halfway.

"Oh, I never forget that, daddy! Never, ever! Not in a million, bajillion years!"

Rafael gave a low chuckle at the quickness of her answer, heart visibly swelling – right alongside Sonny's – underneath shirt fabric and the astounding weight of her words once more:  _"I never forget that, daddy."_

"Y te amo, papi!" Elisa proclaimed, her cheek coming to press against Rafael's, tan skin and dark hair a perfect reflection as she twisted her little body within the bounds of her father's arms, moving them both in a way that allowed Sonny to pay witness to the sight of his husband and daughter so perfectly aligned.

Green to green, heart to heart, each halves to the whole of Sonny's world.

"And I love you, too, daddy! I love papi and you the same! Which is," and Elisa extended her arms, knobby elbow almost coming into painful contact with Rafael's nose as she reached with her fingertips, making the most of every inch of length that her five-year-old body had. 

"It's this much! Except more, 'cause my arms are too little."

Without another word on the matter, Sonny moved to lean long torso and arms across the bar top, hands securing firmly to the span of waist that laid warmly above the jut of Elisa's hip bones.

And with a boost from Rafael, she was tucked into Sonny's chest, his lips finding temple, and nose, and rosy cheek, his press of kisses only ending with a squeeze and a whisper of, "I love you, too, my little chef."

* * *

 

Twenty protest-filled minutes later, – Elisa had insisted that she could cook eggs " _without help_ , daddy"; Sonny had insisted not – they had two pans sizzling away, each resting on their separate burners as the  _cracks_  and  _pops_  of grease-soaked sausage filled the requested silence that Elisa so required in order to complete the Very Important Job that Sonny had assigned to her.

Namely, "keeping watch" as the sausages browned over while Sonny concentrated on the preparing of the eggs.

"Ooo! This one's turning brown, daddy, you need to flip it!" Elisa clapped, knees swinging from her perch on the counter, feet knocking the cabinets below with every excited shift of her legs.

Glancing over a shoulder, Sonny saw that his daughter's sausage assessment was, indeed, correct; it had cooked perfectly, and using a pair of wooden tongs, he flipped it, finishing off the movement with a dramatic flick of bony wrist, much to Rafael's amusement and Elisa's awe.

"Excellent job, Chef Bunny," he observed, a smiling kiss to the top of her head following the adoring lilt of his words. "Now, you think you can hand daddy his cup of coffee?" 

Sonny presented the periwinkle mug to Elisa, her cheekbones lifting and wide eyes brightening as she realized exactly which cup Sonny had chosen to pour Rafael's third serving of the morning into.

It was relatively small when compared to the eclectic array of mugs that he and Rafael had acquired over their last nine years together, varying shapes and sizes which had no order when dispersed among the shelves of one of the higher kitchen cabinets. 

And they owned all of the cheesy variations, too, the tourist-trap mugs which bore a simple, "I Love New York" in bold, block lettering, the ones meant to be anniversary gag gifts that Sonny was pleasantly surprised – and maybe overly pleased – to see become regular fixtures in Rafael's office at work. 

("Really, Barba? A 'Hubby' coffee mug?" Dodds had asked,  _once_ , a month into he and Rafael's marriage. 

A protective hand on Sonny's waist and a glare aimed over the brim of his mug as he'd –  _slowly_  – taken another sip had been enough to cause the squad to leave Rafael's office that afternoon with their tails between their legs.)

But this mug? 

This mug had a special place, on the bottom shelf of the cabinet, right front and center where it was always prominent and easily accessible for either Sonny or Rafael to grab.

" _Hapy Seventh Aniversery Dadees! Luv, Elisa_ " it said; Sonny's mother had tried to help her with the spelling, but even at three-years-old, he and Rafael's little girl had had their combined stubbornness running through her veins.

And below the rim, directly south of where the messy and misspelled letters had been painted in Elisa's misshapen toddler print, was a picture so precious in its content, that Sonny knew, unequivocally, that that mug would be the first thing that either he or Rafael would grab if the apartment were to go up in flames.

 _"See, it's three hearts, daddies! One for me, and you, and you!"_ Elisa had motioned, ticking off the owner of each of her hand-painted hearts as he and Rafael had held her, shared and close in their laps. 

_"See, this one's blue for you, daddy, and this one's red for you, papi! And in the middle, there's me, purple! 'Cause daddy and papi's love made me just like blue and red make purple!"_

And as Sonny pressed the warm ceramic into Elisa's hands, her fingers tightening carefully around the uneven strokes of red and blue, he couldn't help but feel that, maybe, it went both ways.

Maybe red and blue could only exist because a color like purple did.

"My mug!" Elisa cheered, drawing the cup nearer to her body with a happy grin aimed at its coffee-filled depths. "Here you go, daddy, here's your coffee!"

Rafael had to meet her halfway, an action learned from one too many times of Elisa insisting that she could absolutely hand daddy his coffee from the opposite end of the counter "if I just lean over a teeny bit!"; the inevitable spilling of said-coffee and Elisa's subsequent tears, however, were more than enough reason for them to always allow her to try again.

Settling back into his stool across from them, Sonny watched as Rafael hid a chuckle and a smile behind the tilt of his first sip of the caffeinated drink: "Do you want some sugar for your coffee, daddy?"

" _Caw-fee_ ", as Elisa said it.

" _Caw-fee_ " in a miniature, high-pitched Staten Island accent, and Sonny knew that that signature inflection was the sole reason behind the laugh lines so intricately framing dark lashes and warm green.

He was looking at their daughter like she was magical, like she was the most perfect thing that the universe had ever thought to create, like that grimy New York accent that he'd once teased Sonny about was the most beautiful symphony of cascading syllables and phrases when heard passing through her lips. 

Sonny had to kiss him; this time, he was sure to cut the heat first.

In one motion, he was around the bar top and cradling Rafael by the back of the neck, their lips and bodies opening to each other like a sun-scorched flower to rain.

He'd only meant it to be a press of lips, a moment of  _him_  for Sonny to indulge in, to breathe in his coffee-laced sigh and let it fill up Sonny's lungs in a way that his own never had.

But he was bracketed by Rafael's thighs, held firm and stock-still by a hand on the small of his back, and he'd almost completely lost himself in how perfectly Rafael's lips parted and halved for him when he felt the cool tip of a little nose bump against the weekend scruff that littered his cheek.

"I'm going to starve to death if we don't eat soon, daddies."

With a full-bellied laugh, Sonny released him, a blond eyebrow quirked in silent acknowledgement at the smug set of lips that Rafael currently had plastered across his face.

_Yes, our daughter is a drama queen._

_Yes, she got it from me._

_Yes, I am entirely proud of that fact._

Sonny kissed him again – kissed the grin from his mouth,  _tasted_  that grin, let it fill up space between tongue, and jaw, and teeth, never sated when it came to how much of this man he could get.

"Well if I'm not gonna get any food, can I at least get some kisses, too?!"

The next words that found him were easy, unthinking; simple in their composition but heavy in the weight of what he wanted to counter to Elisa's disgruntled whine: "'Course, baby. Me and daddy were just combining ours so we could share 'em with you. Now c'mere."

His cheek was pressed against Rafael's, the friction of stubble meeting stubble reminding Sonny of the affection that they'd shared that morning in bed, skin to skin and chest to chest, lazy caresses and lazier kisses ending in a nuzzle to Sonny's jaw before Rafael had stalked off for both his laptop and the shower, Sonny's presence only joining him in the latter.

Something far gentler and sweet than the rough scrape of shorter hair was overwhelming his senses now, however; with her pink nose rubbing somewhere along the intersection of where he and Rafael's met, Sonny didn't think he'd ever seen their daughter's eyes shine a more vivid green.

"Daddy-papi-Elisa Eskimo kisses!" she exclaimed, each of her hands somehow sightlessly finding a set of both he and Rafael's fingers. "We shared our love! And now we share breakfast, too!"

Laughing, Sonny finally detached himself from Rafael's body, his hips and sides no longer held up by Rafael's weight as he rounded the bar top, a slender hand already reaching for one of the three snowflake-patterned plates he'd set out before their breakfast-making venture had begun.

"So, are you gonna sit on the counter to eat your breakfast, bunny, or are we actually gonna sit at the table?" Sonny teased, noticing that Elisa hadn't so much as inched from her spot near the oven, too busy stirring a packet of Splenda into Rafael's coffee as she draped herself across the span of marble in order to reach.

With a thoughtful hum, she set the spoon down – and,  _really_ , Sonny had  _just_  wiped that counter off – and whipped her head to face him, curls bouncing with the movement.

"I wanna sit on papi's lap! Papi, can I sit on your lap?"

"Por supuesto que puedes, princesa," came Rafael's quick answer, and Elisa almost slipped on the tile coming down from the counter in her eagerness to reach her father's spread and open arms.

Sonny couldn't help himself, couldn't help the way that he stared as he simultaneously tried to spoon a portion of eggs onto Elisa's plate, letting some unintentionally drop from the spoon and onto the oven's surface.

He couldn't help the way that his heart swelled at the sight of the most incredible man that he'd ever known –  _his_  incredible man – planting kisses to the top of their incredible daughter's head, only stopping to lay his chin on those very same brunette locks.

_You're good._

_You're enough._

_You are my and your little girl's everything and more._

_And you'll be our little boy's, too, as soon as he comes along._

Handing Elisa her plate, he recalled a conversation that he'd had with his mother, earlier that week, when she'd predictably called before the previous month had even reached its last day of the calendar, demanding to know every toy and appliance that he, Rafael, and Elisa wanted for Christmas.

His answers for Rafael and Elisa had come easily, Elisa's own decorative and wrinkled Christmas list shoved in between the pages of a paperback novel that claimed space on his bedside table, it's use as a bookmark a nightly reminder to he and Rafael that they needed to head to the craft store before it ran out of sets of Elisa's favorite acrylic paints. 

And Rafael, he wanted a new, leather briefcase; Sonny had already purchased his other desired gift, passes for the two of them to attend a lecture being given by one of his old law professors at NYU in the spring.

He'd been unable, however, to provide his mother with an answer of his own.

She'd needled at him, pressed him for a solid fifteen minutes before giving up, – and he could practically  _see_  his mother's bony hands flying up into the air – an exasperated sigh of, "Call me if you happen to make up your mind before Christmas, Dominick!" following before the monotone sound of the line going dead found his ears.

And in truth, he'd originally chalked up his inability to answer to simply not  _wanting_  anything; he was a thirty-nine-year-old man, what more could he possibly wish for than a constant supply of clean dress socks and job security?

But he knew now – and subconsciously, maybe, he'd known then – that it wasn't a matter of  _want._

It was a matter of  _need_.

And as he watched Rafael and Elisa, his own serving of homemade sausage and eggs laying forgotten and cold beside a grease-filled pan, he knew that not a single second could go by where he'd ever need anything more.

He had a daughter, with her perpetually sticky fingers due to an aversion to silverware, but a zest for life and a creativity that had led some of Sonny's best adventures in life to take place under a blanket-and-pillow fort, where flashlights and hand gestures were the only materials required for an evening abundant in shared laughter and love.

He had a husband, with his naturally self-deprecating nature that Sonny was determined to nip in the bud one day, but with a love so overwhelmingly  _full_  that Sonny had never believed in the idea of an "other half" until he'd spent a night in Rafael's arms and had fallen asleep marveling at the way that the crooks of their elbows and the sets of their shoulders had pieced together so perfectly, as if they'd only ever been looking for their missing set.

And soon, he'd have a baby boy who would only add to that  _more_  that Sonny knew he would never need.

He already had his all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is part one of two in a little Christmas section of this fic!
> 
> Stay tuned for house-hunting, Christmas morning, and Christmas dinner at the Carisi's!
> 
> (ALSO PS I AM SO SORRY FOR THE DELAY IN UPDATE, I AM THE WORST.)
> 
> (Also please review you guys, your kind words keep me going and mean the world to me!)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by **[this](http://library-mermaid.tumblr.com/post/159337114143/a-little-girl-and-her-mom-were-looking-at-me-at)** tumblr post.

The quaint, corner cafe that Jessica Baker frequents is normally quiet.

It's normally strong, artisanal coffee.

It's normally an obviously Pitchfork-inspired playlist droning softly from the overhead speakers, and four, safe, cream-colored walls that block out an endless cityscape.

It's normally quiet.

It is  _not_  normally teeming with children.

Loud,  _sticky_ , obnoxious children.

It's winter break, and she curses herself for not remembering that fact after listening to her preteen niece chatter excitedly about "making up for lost sleep" just the weekend before.

She sips her usual -- a dirty chai, double shot of espresso, _thank you_  -- and can't quite bring herself to shove her earbuds in to drown out the monotony when she spots the couple and little girl sandwiched between them ordering at the counter. 

The shorter man, he's reading off his coffee selection with an air of authority that Jessica finds herself unwillingly leaning into -- like her visual art professor at Tisch last spring, she thinks, who'd inspired awe in many a student only to be a sanctimonious, self-righteous prick behind closed office doors.

He's dressed smartly, a crisp, checkered shirt adorning his person underneath the confines of a complimentary suit jacket, and though it's clear that he has a similarly-priced wardrobe hanging up and color-coordinated in a bedroom closet at home, he doesn't wear the lines of arrogance on his face in the same way that he does the gleaming watch tight around his wrist. 

Jessica decides that he's the type of man that people develop a distaste for because they see his clothes and miss his face, and the wedding band on a long fourth finger tells her that only one person's ever bothered to look up.

He's at the man's hip, fresh-faced and bent over at the waist -- he's dirty blond, and undeniably younger, wearing a pair of well-fitting slacks and a powder blue button-up, his rolled up sleeves wrinkling even deeper with every movement of his willow-thin arms as he explains to the little girl between them what she can and cannot have from the coffee shop's extensive drink menu.

"No, Elisa, you're five years old, you're not having coffee. Look, they got hot chocolate! Or you could get a smoothie, strawberry and banana sounds pretty good, right?"

The toddler at his side -- "Elisa", apparently -- pays him no attention, however. 

Instead, her fingers latch onto he and the other man's trousers, what little bit of extra fabric there is bunched between her fists acting as a hand hold of sorts as she rises slowly up to tip-toe, white sandals beginning to peek out from underneath the hem of her pale pink peacoat.

"But I'm tall, daddy, see! Tall people are grown-ups. That means I can have coffee like you and papi!"

Jessica almost slips; she clamps down violently on her tongue to keep from smiling at just how positively  _darling_  the whole display is.

"Am I tall enough to be a grown-up yet, papi?"

The older man looks down at the endearment, going soft-eyed at the sight of pink cheeks and wobbly knees.

Jessica also decides that this man isn't one who acquires laughter lines easily, and that the thin creases which mark the corners of his eyes and lips can't be much older than the little girl herself.

He watches his husband scoop up the toddler, careful kisses pressed to her cheek almost as careful as the large hands that cradle her back and make sure not to wrinkle the lines of her peacoat.

"C'mon, baby, let's go find a table. Daddy's gonna order you a surprise, which is like, a  _million_  times better than coffee."

She looks ready to protest --  _and who is this child being raised by, lawyers_? -- but her father cuts the sentiment short with a quick nose nuzzle, and Jessica wishes that she could honestly blame the high dosage of caffeine that's sitting half-sipped in the mug to her right for the way that her heart is clenching.

Instead, she refocuses back to see the darker-haired man's gaze slip into something somehow incredibly softer -- something that reminds her of early morning sunlight against bare skin. 

She thinks that maybe, rather, those well-earned wrinkles are as old as those golden wedding bands.

He turns back to the counter -- hot chocolate is his unsurprising surprise of choice -- and Jessica tries not to make it too obvious that she's still observing their little family of three by cracking open one of the textbooks that she keeps stowed away inside of a messenger bag, propping the side of her head on a palm and keeping her periphery planted on the younger man and their daughter as they maneuver the aisles and take a seat at a table just two over from hers.

The little girl immediately snatches a napkin from the stainless steel dispenser that occupies the center of the checker-patterned table, and for the first time Jessica realizes how truly  _wide_  her bright, green eyes are.

Like the ocean, they're expansive, reaching far beyond limits perceived or imaginable; if not for her snappy personality, Jessica could easily see how any one person would fall smitten to those orbs of emerald alone.

The coffees and hot chocolate are delivered quickly -- Jessica's been trying to parse together whether or not the little girl's aiming to fold the flimsy napkin into some semblance of origami or simply tear it to shreds when the kiddy-sized mug is placed gently in front of her, her second father's eyes following it as she flicks her stare upwards and asks, "Papi, did you 'member to pack my crayons in your 'case?"

He freezes, mug brushing lips as his expression grows wide and alarmed, and aimed solely at the man sitting opposite of him.

He lowers the beverage slowly, and there's far too much guilt settled within the pinch of his brow for a meager pack of forgotten crayons, Jessica thinks; she decides to unpack that later, however, and listens instead as he says quietly, "You know, sweetheart, I think I might have left them sitting on the kitchen counter by accident."

"Ay dios mío papi!"

Jessica almost loses it, almost gives herself away, right there, right in the center of the Cornerstone Coffee Shop, all because this little girl,  _this four-year-old child_ , now has her shaking head in her tiny hands, looking for all of the world as though she's been personally accosted by her father's forgetfulness as she continues her mutter of unintelligible Spanish into her palms.

While she manages to hold it together, the younger man does not; she's surprised he doesn't spray coffee down his front from the way that he chokes and coughs in between sputtered breaths of laughter.

He doesn't start to calm down until the little girl drags her thin fingers down the length of her face, a so entirely  _put-out_  expression worn on her features that Jessica is almost slipping once more.

"Can I least use your phone to color when you gots your meeting with godmommy Elana?" 

Her father nods succinctly, his answer arriving with a pair of stooped shoulders just as it had with the initial admission of his error: "Of course you can, bunny. And I'm so sorry that I forgot your crayons, I don't know what I was thinking."

The little girl tucks and plants her knees firmly on the cushion of the chair before either man has the presence of mind to argue the danger of such a movement, which jostles mugs and the table alike.

"It's okay, I know it was just an accident, 'cause accidents mean you didn't mean to forget! So you don't even have to say you're sorry, 'kay, papi?"

With the added height of her knees, she peaks just below the midpoint of the shorter man's torso; the new addition proves fruitful as she leans across the short expanse of countertop that separates them, and presses a kiss to the top of his hand. 

The unbidden sweetness of the gesture -- it throws Jessica off.

She's never seen a set of parents look so thoroughly in love with anything and everything that is their child without so much as an  _attempt_  at dipping their hand in and mixing those facets around to make a slightly different shade.

It's a foreign expression to her -- her own parents,  they'd never held acceptance in their gaze before.

The haircuts, the piercings -- a  _nose ring_ , for god's sake -- the coupling of art history and literature into a double major.

Sometimes she wonders if she'd chosen that path simply because it came with a two-for-one offer of pissing her parents off.

Inexplicably, she's glad that this little girl will never be forced to do either.

She isn't sure how much longer she watches them, the chapter on the cultural relevance of the surrealism movement at the turn of the twentieth century sitting unread and unmarked between her cocoon of forearms and pointed elbows.

She thinks she was correct in her lawyer deduction -- there's a passing mention of a "warrant" in between slow, measured sips of coffee before the conversation is redirected back to a future promise of the park, and with it, the impending mastery of the little girl's fear of the monkey bars.

Jessica's smiling at the quip, reminiscing upon her own days of when those three feet that had separated her sneakers from the schoolyard sand had felt like the space between the two ends of the earth itself --

And that's when the little girl's eyes finally fall upon her own. 

It's a flash of acknowledgment, a flash of, "I see you, so don't pretend not to see me", and then her green eyes are trailing over the curve of her cheek, across the peak of Jessica's shoulder, moving still further downwards until her stare reaches the spot where pale skin meets a latticework of darker ink. 

The expression that she finds herself met with is questioning and  _hungry_  in a way that leaves Jessica feeling raw with vulnerability.

By the eyes of a five-year-old, no less.

She's suddenly all-too aware of the dark tank top that she'd tugged on that morning in her sleep-deprived frenzy for caffeine, even more so as the toddler smooshes her nose against her younger father's cheek for whispered words and a barrage of continued bashful glances.

The other man only becomes attuned to their muted back-and-forth when the little girl raises an index finger and, with the social grace that Jessica supposes she should presume from this tiny human -- not even yet in kindergarten, no less -- gestures directly her way.

"Mi princesa, no, no, don't point, that's not very nice."

The little girl retracts her finger just as quickly as she'd brandished it, a soft pink dusting the warm caramel of her cheeks with embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, papi, it's just -", and then she's off to whispering again, and how those muttered words are any less obviously rude than the pointing of an appendage, Jessica is sure she will never be able to fathom.

His eyes flicker up owlishly to find the other man's, a trim-shouldered shrug meeting him there; an entire conversation, laid beneath raised eyebrows and quirks of lips as their daughter observes wide-eyed from behind the lip of a Sytrofoam mug.

Finally, he turns back to face her, the set of his broad shoulders unreadable beneath the fabric -- expensive,  _probably_  -- laid thickly across his back: "You can go over there, but be kind, okay? Don't say anything that you wouldn't say to daddy or I, or to Becca."

She makes it out ahead of both of her fathers' proffered hands, nodding eagerly; loose ringlets of brown bounce against the puffy shoulders of her coat as she makes her descent to the morning-chilled tile, moving sure-footed through the maze of table and chair legs alike.

Jessica's eyes flicker back over  _Dalí_  and  _Magritte,_ the pages smoothed out underneath her palms as she triesto keep her staring minimal, and at the very least, less obvious -- the little girl is clearly aiming for the family of four sitting and drinking quietly to her right, and Jessica would like to keep the number of families that she brings discomfort to in a single day to be kept at a maximum of one.

In a play at going for her coffee, she lifts her head up, sweeps her bangs back, and looks to mark the toddler's progress; she finds the space beside the adjacent family's table empty, and feels a prod at her own elbow instead.

"Ex-cuse me, please, but do you have to put on your tattoos by yourself  _every day_ , or does your daddy help you?" 

With a whip of her head, Jessica feels the dyed ends of her hair brush teasingly along the bridge of the little girl's nose, but she's too bewildered to do anything more than watch wide-eyed as she scrunches her cheeks with a giggle and looks on expectantly.

She finds the fathers next, smiling softly from over top of the little girl's head, their hands eager and linked at the center of the table. The older man is squeezing his husband's thin fingers between the pressure of his own palm like a stress ball, and only when the younger man's lips meet the peaks and valleys of his knuckles do his tattered nerves seem to be satiated. 

Without thinking, her words come unbidden, tumbling from her lips: "I, uh. I have to put them on by myself. I don't live with my dad anymore."

Those green eyes continue to wander, unanswering, up from her bony wrist where the sleeve of ink ends, and up and around the curve where forearm and elbow meet. 

She pauses in her search of Jessica's skin, confusion pinching the bright-eyed curiosity that had hallmarked her features: "If you don't live with your daddy, where do you live? With your other daddy? Or do you have a daddy and a  _mommy_?"

Jessica reaches to close her textbook, making sure to dog-ear the page before rapping on it's green cover with a set of lightly-placed knuckles.

"Well, I go to college actually. So, I, umm. I live with some friends."

Abruptly, the little girl takes her hand -- in the same manner as her fathers had taken each other's, Jessica notices.

If there was a word for the grip, it'd be tender, Jessica thinks, in the way that it's gentle, yet reassuring, like how her mother used to take her hand after fragmented nightmares and whisper song until she'd fallen back into the peacefulness of a blank sleep.

She isn't sure why the simple placement of soft palm to the top of her hand is so comforting, or why it makes her chest feel so unbearably warm. 

"But friends aren't  _daddies_! Here, you can meet my daddies!"

The little girl starts tugging more vigorously on Jessica's fingers, the touch filled still with a gentle excitement. She only gives pause when Jessica manages to plant the heels of her combat boots firmly into the tile, hanging back just enough to scramble for her messenger bag before shoving her art history textbook into its depths, next to a pack of expired chewing gum and a plastic-wrapped sketch pad.

The intermission is cause enough for the little girl to go wide-eyed and smile, her neck tilting back like a baby giraffe's as she tries to meet Jessica's gaze from her two-foot height, "Oh, and my name's Elisa Barba-Carisi, and I'm five years old! What's your name?!"

Their steps fall in tandem, Jessica purposefully cutting short her long-legged gait as to not risk overstepping Elisa's tinier one as they weave themselves throughout the cluster of tables.

"Jessica," she replies briskly, belatedly, and it's as if the little girl before her is paying witness to the figure of  _Santa Clause_  himself, her head cocking back just-so as to throw Jessica an unsettlingly delighted grin, bouncing out of her skin and on the balls of her feet alike as they continue to tread the path back towards her fathers.

"That's auntie 'Manda's daughter's name! Well, kinda. Her name's Jessie, so close enough! She's really nice and fun, she lets me play with her  _all the time!_ Even though she's more _ma-ture_ than me. 'Least, that's what daddy says."

The non-answer of steady footsteps and the jangling of apartment keys against the clutter in her messenger bag seems to suffice; the little girl doesn't turn to address Jessica again until they've reached the aforementioned fathers and their amused stares, aimed high and directly at her. 

"Jessica, these are my daddies!" Elisa begins, gesturing grandly towards their still-linked figures as if she's preparing to perform a David Blaine-esque feat in between sips of her hot chocolate.

" _This_  daddy's name is Sonny," and she motions in the direction of the sandy-haired man's knee, it being all she can reach; his temples are gray underneath the fluorescent lighting in a way that Jessica hadn't noticed from a distance, but his blue eyes are smiling all the same. 

"But papi calls him  _love._ And I call him  _daddy Sonny bunny,_ 'cause I'm bunny, and Sonny rhymes with bunny, right, daddy?! And then papi will call him  _honey bunny_  if he's feeling  _really_  silly! Oh, and he's a police officer. That means he catches the bad guys and has a gun. Which I'm not supposed to touch.  _Ever_."

Jessica gives him a weak smile at the barrage of information, but he returns it tenfold, with dimples and deep laughter lines.

"And  _this_  daddy's name is Rafael," Elisa continues, her palm now coming to fully grip the fabric at the seam of the older man's black slacks, his leg being nearest to her.

"But daddy calls him  _Rafi_. And I call him  _papi_ , 'cause he speaks Spanish like me! 'Cause he's -", she comes up short, lips and brow puckered in a similar line of frustration. "Papi, what are you again?"

In any other setting, it'd sound crass, out of any other mouth, a methodically flung insult; out of her mouth,  _her eyes_ , it's an unwavering ember of innocent curiosity. 

And, maybe, innocent bluntness, too.

Her father --  _Rafael_  -- meets her wide eyes with adoration to match.

"I'm Cuban, baby. And you are...?"

"Mexican! I'm Mexican, Jessica! I'm Mexican, and papi's Cuban, and we both speak Spanish! Papi taught me 'cause he's a smarty pants. He knows  _everything_ 'cause he's a dis-terict attorney."

Both men bite into the flesh of their bottom lip to keep from snickering at the mispronunciation; only a puff of air manages to escape from behind Jessica's teeth before the introductory table is being flipped.

"Daddies, this is Jessica, the lady with the pretty tattoos that I was telling you about! See, she's my friend! She doesn't even care that I pointed!"

Jessica can see incredulity in the way that the blonde man --  _Sonny_  -- thumbs unevenly along the visible upper-portion of his husband's wedding band.

"Did you ask her if she cared, bunny?" he questions.

"Well, no, but-"

His stare solidifies, his thumb twitches, and the older man's leather-encased foot taps a steady rhythm atop the tile that matches both in weight and measure.

Elisa's confidence in the sentiment falters before either mans' expression allows give: "I'm sorry if I made you feel bad when I pointed, Jessica. I didn't mean to, promise. 'Cause I know how it feels sad when people point at you, sometimes."

The realization barrels harder than the first taste of espresso that had wet Jessica's tired tongue that morning:  _they just want her to be kind_.

She thinks maybe she'd been drawn to this family because them and herself are one and the same, checkered button-ups and pleated pants aside.

Because where she had tattoos, they had wedding bands, and the unmistakable, angular fluidity of a pair of razor-cut jaws. 

Because where her hair was dyed purple (" _You look like you dipped your head in Kool-Aid!"_  her mother had said), they had an ever-darkening canvas of skin, stretched thin over straining muscle and the jut of bone. 

Milky white to sun-kissed tan to somewhere both light and dark and in between, all through the passage of three hands; Elisa, now sat snugly on Rafael's thighs, her palm resting on top of and covering the knuckles of the men's interlaced hands.

 _They want her to be kind_ ,because two dads and darker skin doesn't always guarantee you kindness outright.

_They want her to be kind anyways._

Jessica almost wants to laugh.

Finger-pointing over "pretty tattoos"  _was kind_.

 _It was the kindest thing_.

And she would let this little girl know, unequivocally.

"Do you wanna look at my tattoos?" 

She offers up her arm, vulnerable and no longer hidden by the hands clasped tightly against the small of her back. 

"I don't mind if you do. I mean -- especially since you think they're so pretty. I've never had anyone call them that before."

She stays planted, unsure of whether or not to approach the wide-eyed gaze fixed upon the marked skin of her forearm; Elisa's assessing again, the dart of an eye or a tilt of the head tracing invisible patterns that seem to spiral up the length of Jessica's bony arm.

Finally, she nods, the crown of her head just narrowly missing the jut of her father's chin.

"Can I, please?"

Jessica makes to move and crouch down in front of her, get on eye-level with her so that she can better see the intricacies of the designs and their measured placements, but the younger man has other ideas. 

He pops up from his seat with an abruptness that has Jessica feeling dizzy with its gusto, and he waves towards the chair with a delicate hand: "Here, you can have my seat, I'll sit in Elisa's now that she's in Rafi's lap."

And he does just that, planting himself firmly in the seat previously occupied by the little girl and angling the length of his narrow torso towards her as she sits, smoothing down her floral-patterned skirt with nervous fingers before looking up to take the family across from her in.

They're beautiful, she thinks.

All gentle smiles, and kind eyes, and soft edges that speak to affection in abundance.

She lays her naked forearm across the expanse of tabletop between them, no longer wary.

"I only have flowers," she explains, a smile sneaking along the set of her lips as Elisa leans curiously away from Rafael's chest, her small hands keeping her balanced on either side of Jessica's wrist. 

"I don't know, there's just...something I love about flowers, I guess. How delicate, yet strong they are. How they can survive all kinds of storms and winds with nothing but this innate, gentle strength."

Elisa nods, still examining the cornucopia of black and gray, as if the metaphor hadn't entirely surpassed the intellectual abilities of her five-year-old brain.

"Have you ever been hugged really strong but soft before, Jessica? 'Cause flowers are kinda like hugs like that. Soft and strong, like papi and daddy's hugs."

Jessica watches as the two men's steady gazes turn into something that can only be described as wonder; the word is only that, though -- as lofty as it is, it does nothing to capture the absolute adoration spilling forth from their cheeks as their little girl wraps her arms tightly around herself, demonstrating for Jessica the proper technique that goes into each of her daddies' hugs.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she answers quietly, retracting her arm until it's hanging by her side once more. "When I was little like you, my grandpa used to give me hugs just like that."

"Oh, papa's hugs are good, too, but daddies' are the bestest," Elisa replies, adjusting herself so that she's once again flush against her father's strong chest. "Soon, new baby brother Ollie will be here and I can give him hugs like daddies give me."

Jessica nods, smile soft -- they're adopting again, and it makes sense.

While neither man, realistically, errs on the side of spry, she isn't sure that their older age and all that it entails really matters.

What are gray temples and creaky knees when it's so abundantly clear that their hearts are never fuller than with the presence of this little girl in their lives?

She's about to ask into it -- how old the little boy would be, how they had chosen his name -- when she feels bright green eyes holding firm and steady near the length of her left side once more.

"How come you don't have any color flowers?" Elisa asks, dark brows furrowed; she looks the picture of her father, posture straight and commanding as if she's preparing to hold court at their little table littered with half-empty coffee mugs and crumpled origami napkin creations.

Jessica shrugs, rubbing self-consciously at the pale skin at her elbow, dried and cracked from December's inaugural assault on the city, "I've just never been much for color, I guess. Plus, the guy who draws them for me prefers working in black and gray-"

"Oh, well I can draw!! I draw really good, Jessica, pinky swear! I can draw you the most prettiest flower with-with  _all of the colors of the rainbow_!!"

 Her little fingers begin to itch at the countertop, as if suddenly nervous to be without an outlet for the creativity that's advancing, sure-footed and steady, behind the scope of her bright green eyes.

The younger man notices this and removes his hand from where it had held firm at the base of his husband's skull, gathering all five of her fingers into his palm for a squeeze and a sigh.

"Bunny, I  _know_  Miss Jessica would think that your artwork is beautiful, but-"

"Elisa's an artist?"

The suddenness of it surprises even Jessica herself -- she shrinks under the parental glow of the two men as they exchange warm glances at the acknowledgment of their daughter's skills.

Artistic endeavors for a five-year-old typically meant finger-painting, or tracing out one's name with unnecessary amounts of glue and tissue paper; you didn't call those creations "artwork", though, you called them "crafts", relegated to the corner of the refrigerator door not camouflaged in memo pads and tourist-trap magnets.

Elisa's fixation on her tattoos -- their symmetry and design, specifically -- suddenly makes sense.

"Yeah, she's our little artist, alright," Sonny answers, expression and words soft in equal measure as he watches Elisa duck her chin shyly. 

"She's always doing watercolors, or sketches-I mean, she  _loves_  trying to do me and Rafi. She'll actually make us sit down in front of her while she sits behind the little easel that we got her last Christmas and tries to draw us. She's always gotta tell me to 'hold still, daddy!' 'cause apparently I move too much."

Rafael smiles fondly, nodding his head along with every nuance of the other man's description before humming, grin present and teasing, "She'll always point a finger at you, too, when you fidget too much, love. Like you do when she's in trouble."

"We just wanna encourage it, ya know?" Sonny adds, the lines marking his forehead and brow creasing as he shoots the older man a playful glare.

Quickly, Rafael catches Sonny's put-upon pout in a press of lips that has the younger man going pliant and soft-eyed, all play at mock annoyance undone at the hands of his husband's mouth.

In that moment, nothing short of " _fucking adorable_ " could so profoundly capture the way in which the two men across from her tease and love on each other -- how many arguments about nursery colors and organic versus inorganic baby food had ended in kisses and the palming of bare skin between these two?

"I mean, this kid-she was organizing her blocks by color order when she was nine months old," the younger man continues. His dimples are showing, and Rafael's lips linger there, against blush and the crease of his cheek. 

"And I'm not talking just reds with reds, and greens with greens, ya know? I'm talking organizing them by  _shade_. Elisa's blocks were like looking at one of those color palettes at a friggin' Home Depot."

The little girl in question keeps her head dipped bashfully, her father's pride relegated to the curtain of soft curls that frames the pink of her cheeks and the gentle curve of her chin.

Her eyes remain focused on Sonny's hand, overwhelming in its size when pressed up against the meager length of hers; only does she look up, pausing her tender-fingered exploration of the callouses that mark her father's palm when Jessica clears her throat in the silence that settles between them, and says, "Well, I'm, uh. I'm an artist, too, Elisa."

Both men's brows rise to meet their hairlines with a level of synchronicity that would be amusing if not for the way that the sudden display of regard has Jessica's teeth and jaw set along a taut string of nerves once more.

Elisa, however, is wide-eyed in a display of what Jessica can only describe as  _delight --_ her green irises are probing, but warm, just the same as they'd been while tracing the misshapen petals of orchids and roses alike.

"I, um. I actually go to school for art. That's what I'm studying in college right now. That and English, but art's my major passion, so I totally get the color thing. I used to draw on the walls when I was a kid, too, got in a lot of trouble for that."

She finishes off the memory with what feels like a smile, but she finds that it isn't matched -- Elisa's open-mouthed, only Rafael's hand on the small of her back permitting her success in the act of remaining upright as she edges herself away from the expanse of his body, the better to take in both of her fathers' amused forms.

"I didn't know you could go to school for art, daddies!!  _Why didn't you tell me_?!"

If possible, Sonny's dimples seem to dig even farther into the dusty rose of his cheeks as he considers his daughter's outrage with a measured grin.

"What do you mean, bunny, you do art at school every day? Of course you can grow up and be an artist, you know that."

The little girl sighs, forehead falling to the skin of her palms in an exact mirroring of the exasperation-filled display that she'd enacted earlier during The Plight of the Forgotten Crayons, right down to the "Dios mío, daddy!" that she groans through the muffling of fingers.

"I  _know_  I can be an artist, daddy! I can be whatever I want, even Super Elisa, 'member!? But I didn't know you could go to school and just learn about art _all day_!!"

Jessica is suddenly incredibly grateful for having left her coffee out of reach and at the disposal of the hands of the busboy on duty -- Elisa attempts to roll her eyes so dramatically that Jessica can't help but snort, and it's followed by a cough of a laugh that jolts her elbow in a way that would've surely knocked something over had it been in the appendage's path.

She'd seen Rafael embody a similar mannerism earlier, when she'd still been relegated to watching their family from afar; it'd come at the mention of a fellow named "Buchanan", and the expression had had enough theatrics behind it for Jessica to know, unequivocally, that the miniature drama queen sighing across from her had gotten her sass from him.

 _Poor Sonny_ , she thought. 

 _You don't stand a chance_.

With her belly no longer full of laughter, Jessica seeks out those same eyes as they finish their overly-circular motion: "Is that what you wanna be when you get older, Elisa? An artist?"

"Oh, yes!" Elisa gasps, hands suddenly scrabbling at the dark fabric of Rafael's pants. "Papi, show Jessica the pictures of my artwork that you have, please!"

The man obliges swiftly, pulling an iPhone from his pocket and unlocking it with a level of dexterity that Jessica finds entirely intimidating. Much like everything else about him, its case is sleek and polished, not even a hint of fingerprint-smudging across the glass screen.

He pulls up a photo album entitled "Elisa's Artwork" before Jessica has the chance to fully appreciate the tongues-out selfie of Sonny and Elisa that inhabits the four corners of his home screen.

Rows upon rows of photographs have already been cataloged within the digital album, and Rafael flickers over each one with a careful eye, clearly aiming to scope out a particular favorite; he's only traveled three Elisa-designed rows down when the little girl shoves her hot chocolate-sticky hand underneath the man's prominent nose and begins tapping incessantly on the screen, hot cocoa dust dirtying it's gleaming surface.

"This one, please, daddy! It's got flowers like Jessica's pretty tattoos!"

Rafael's eyes flicker cuttingly over the trail of dark powder left in Elisa's wake, and Jessica expects a reprimand of some sort to leave his pressed lips -- a plea not to dirty daddy's work phone, maybe, or a tight-lipped reminder to have one of the men at her rear wipe down her hands before skirting a finger across its polished surface again.

Instead, she watches as he nuzzles further into the closeness of the little girl's body, his lips finding dark hair in a firm kiss.

The movement shows a tenderness and affection that knows no bounds, five-year-old hot chocolate hands tarnishing the screen of his phone and the lap of his trousers withstanding; Jessica wonders when she'll stop underestimating just how much love this man holds in his heart.

"Okay, mi princesa, but you have to move your fingers if papi's going to show Miss Jessica your beautiful artwork, sí?"

Low and soft, Elisa murmurs, "'Kay, papi,", and she retraces her steps through the trail of dark powder, her hand smudging little fingerprints more permanently into the corners of the glass.

Quickly, the table's other occupant produces a package of wet wipes from the interior of his pocket, wordlessly ridding her fingers of the offending dust as Elisa says a quick "thank you, daddy!", not allowing her attention to diverge from the screen for longer than a second. 

Rafael whispers to the little girl to be patient, that, "you'll be able to show Jessica your artwork soon, sweetheart, I promise", as Sonny then uses the wipe to clear the chocolate from his husband's phone, looking at him with flushed cheeks and wide eyes as he holds Elisa tightly to him.

Sonny's adoration -- it's clear in the thoroughness with which he returns the other man's phone to its previous immaculate state, clear in the softness of his cheeks as he passes the phone back off into strong, waiting hands.

Jessica catches a glimpse of shared, shining gold as their fingers momentarily link, but the image's significance falls farther to the wayside the longer that she spends her morning across from the two men; even without those matching rings, anyone would know that theirs is a permanent kind of love.

"Well, now that that's taken care of, shall we look at one of Elisa's latest creations?" Rafael presses the phone flat to the table, not quite allowing it to cross fully into Jessica's line of sight -- it's an offer, and Jessica accepts it readily, nodding as she cradles the phone closer to her, Elisa's masterpiece blooming into full fruition as she enlarges the glossy-clean image.

Pinks and blues, pale purples and yellows, they're all smattered across the screen in vibrant watercolors of varying lengths and curves that all gather together to rest in the center of a slightly-wrinkled manilla sheet of construction paper.

Each flower's painted structure consists of a complimentary color pairing, and Sonny's story about the rainbow-organized blocks finally has context in Jessica's eyes -- baby blues interweave throughout bright, sunflower yellows, and shades of lavender find a home within dustings of pale pink. 

It's beautiful, and soft, the brush strokes marking the page gentle in their weight yet inconsistent in both shape and size; it's imperfect, and a little bit messy, with a faded grape juice stain marking the corner of the page.

She looks up and sees the gorgeous little girl with the sea green eyes, hot chocolate dust still ghosting along her upper lip, and it fits.

Beautiful, gentle,  _imperfect --_ it fits _._ _  
_

_"_ This is really beautiful, Elisa. I mean it. This is years beyond anything I ever did when I was your age," she says, pressing the phone back into the warmth of Rafael's palms. "So that's really what you wanna be, huh? An artist?"

"Yep!" Elisa exclaims, nodding feverishly as she bounces away in her visibly-amused father's lap, all unbidden, childish excitement on full display. "That or Super Elisa! 'Cause I got superpowers, see?!"

She tucks a thick curl behind an ear, Rafael's hands falling protectively to her waist as she weeble-wobbles her way across the table and almost collides into Jessica's folded arms. An index finger comes up and taps pointedly against the shell of her ear then, and Jessica recognizes the dark purple device almost immediately: it's a hearing aid, curled and fit to the inside of Elisa's ear, hidden before by dense locks of brown.

"See?! These give me superpowers, Jessica! Daddies say they let me hear better than anyone else in the  _whole entire world,"_ she says, face set solemnly to match the low thrum of her voice. "But I don't tell anyone that, 'cause superheroes gotta keep their powers a secret."

She looks as though she's divulging state secrets, one whisper away from going trigger-happy on the metaphorical nuclear launch pad; Jessica indulges her, tone measured and forehead bowed towards the optimal secret-keeping space that Elisa had so obviously aimed to establish.

"Well, Elisa, you'll make a  _wonderful_  superhero if that's what you decide you wanna be. You're already doing awesome now and you're only five. Imagine how strong and powerful you'll be when you're old like me."

"What about when I'm an old person like my daddies," she counters, a giggle rippling through her, and Sonny and Rafael's eyes yield with the softness of falling deeper yet again. Her curls whip against narrow shoulder and thick wool as she fixes them both with a mischievous quirk of the mouth, and Jessica watches as the same notion dances, without hesitation, across both men's brows:  _cracks at our age, be damned_.

And really, isn't that the same sentiment that rests within her own heart?

Those shy glimmers of curiosity and regard that she'd originally misread be damned.

The careful cornucopia of selective black and gray that spills from the jut of her shoulder be damned.

The only things that hold any weight are those happy eyes and the heart that the little girl across from her so proudly wears on her sleeve.

Jessica flicks her gaze back down to the slender cut of her wrist, the span of skin there the only expanse along the length of her arm that remains untouched by her own ideas and dreams. 

She traces purple veins with thumb, then eye, and decides that some color would suit the canvas well. 

Elisa does know a thing or two about complimentary colors, after all. 

"So, Elisa. You wanna draw me a tattoo?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW, DID YOU GUYS THINK I DIED?!
> 
> Anyways!!
> 
> As always, I hope you guys enjoyed the update! Hopefully now that I'm finished with my first year of college and on summer break, I'll be able to update a little more frequently and finally wrap this story up! 
> 
> Comments are much appreciated, loves. <3


	6. Chapter 6

"Now, I don't know if you realized this while you were looking at the online images, but the kitchen does, in fact, have a skylight. A quite gorgeous one, at that. It's one of the biggest selling points of this particular home, actually."

Rafael had always  _loathed_  realtors -- they were the housing market's cars salesman, working for commission rather than costumer; the singular experience that he'd had with one while purchasing his first apartment -- _"You know, you don't normally see Latino men around these parts."_  -- had been enough of an ordeal that it had turned him off of the profession almost entirely.

It'd been more than twenty years ago, but the bitter taste had never quite ceased to wet his tongue or lips.

That afternoon, however, and the bright, early introduction that morning to the woman who bore the title of their realtor had bordered on just the right side of  _perfectly mundane_  that Rafael had found his opinion evolving, if not toeing towards a more positively permanent state. 

Truthfully, though, the thing that held him there, suspended and eager for the game-changing jump over the dotted finish line wasn't a change in opinion of his own; it stood two-feet tall and found kindness in dark alleys, and held the hand of a woman that they'd only met this morning as though they'd chatted and shared tea in another life, all at the off-white table that had grown dusty as it sat unused in the corner of her bedroom.

Her name was Rosa, and she was Cuban as well, and she wore her pride in her heritage in the set of her jaw like a second skin; a navy pantsuit followed that wasn't as naturally donned -- and that Rafael thought was  _truly_ hideous -- but it was hard to find made-up reasons to dislike the younger woman when she'd begun chattering away with a bright-eyed Elisa in Spanish.

That was one of the more incredible things that he'd learned -- and subsequently promised to himself, palm pressed flat to a stack of metaphorical Bibles -- after becoming a father. 

He would do anything --  _be anything_  -- if it meant making his little girl happy.

And Elisa -- she managed to bring the most  _undignified_  gestures out of him, too; he'd put  _peanut butter_  on his  _nose_  more instances than he could count, because it was "silly, daddy!", and drew giggles from Elisa's pink cheeks while she wrote sentences about their family at the kitchen table and he packed her lunch for her adventures in kindergarten the next day.

He would even let himself fall to the  _un-vacuumed living room carpet_ , full suit of armor wholly intact, while Sonny tackled him there, a knee to the groin typically earned throughout his husband's gangly process.

The game was always "Dragon and the Knight", Sonny the warrior charging into battle with a paper towel roll sword to save the damsel arriving home early from the office; the dragon herself was never particularly ferocious, giggling and arguing the rules of the game with Sonny when he inevitably insisted that he'd saved Rafael from her with a kiss.

He would lay on that dirty, Goldfish-dusted rug for hours, playing trapped while Sonny and Elisa sparred with their play swords across the width of the coffee table.

Rafael had learned, far quicker than any language or any single meditation on criminal law, that he would consistently and irrevocably sacrifice his own pride if it meant bringing Elisa joy.

"Look at our baby," Sonny whispered to him then, careful not to upset the concentration that had fallen over Elisa's dark brows as Rosa described the statuary marble to her that made up the surface of the kitchen's countertops. "Like seriously, Rafi, she was actually paying attention when we were watching those shows. She knows what freakin'  _statuary marble_  is. I just--I love her so much."

Rafael kissed his cheek, warmth spreading as Sonny's cheeks did underneath his lips.

He'd realized, long ago, that he'd sacrifice anything to make this man happy, too.

Nine years' worth of savings hadn't totaled out to a sum as large as he and Sonny and hoped for in their pursuit of purchasing a piece of real estate, and there'd been a hushed argument on the matter one evening following Elisa's nightly bedtime tale.

Sonny had insisted on picking up OT through Christmas, while Rafael had been steadfast in maintaining that picking up a few cases at Rita's new firm for misrepresented victims of sex crimes would do them more than good in evening the scales of whatever total they needed for the down payment on what was to become their new home.

Sonny still had the sergeant’s exam to focus what meager slices of free time that he gathered during the week on; Rafael had one case currently sitting in his docket, and until the defendant settled on a steady counsel, his prosecutorial skills were wholly unneeded. 

The idea of them both taking evenings was a thought whose formation didn't even deserve to become tangible through a pass of breath from either of their lips.

They'd made promises with a nine-month-old baby girl held between them, and they were whispered words then that had held up like cooled iron to this day.

_We never miss a first day of school._

_We never miss a performance, or a fair, or a game_.

_We never -- ever -- miss story time before bed._

Sonny was the natural tale spinner of them both, stringing together syllables and sounds from somewhere deep beneath his breast, stories collecting there like dust to his chest as he told of lands passed on from grandfathers and great uncles alike -- it was only natural that he saw their little girl off to her land of dreams while Rafael worked to secure their future.

It had taken a twice-daily mantra of, "it's not  _over_ , it's  _for_ " for Rafael to fully settle into the fact that he'd be at a desk, for months unseen, pouring over case files in Rita's recently acquired office space rather than spending his evenings breading dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets with his husband while Elisa sang off-key to the words of Disney blaring from their living room.

Sonny's smiles, Elisa's laughter, the easy affection that overwhelmed his senses at the simple act of looking up and seeking out their presence -- he'd had to gather each one like bits of sand in his palm, precious and close and in abundance, each grain kept close to his chest for when the background image on his phone wasn't enough.

The echo of all that was them wasn't ideal, wasn't always enough to offset the loneliness that came in the form of takeaway Thai food and the cool press of a metal chair under his palms.

But then he'd arrive home, late, the hour only marked by the rumples in his suit and the soft give of his hair, colors reflecting back in a kaleidoscopic dance from TV screen to night-cast wall as he'd make his way into the apartment.

And then he'd see them -- a perfect vision of what it had all been meant for.

It was a sight that typically greeted him on Friday evenings -- pizza and ice cream night in the Barba-Carisi household, when Sonny would spin and knead homemade dough and Rafael would frequent the corner market on his commute home from the office for two tubs of Elisa's favorite brand of strawberry ice cream.

It was a tradition forged in both time and commitment, another soft-spoken promise between himself and Sonny to give their little girl that special evening at least once a week, its inaugural commencement having taken place just two days shy of Elisa's second birthday and one tooth shy of a full set of baby teeth.

Its continuance wasn't dependent on Rafael's presence, only on that of the ice cream's, and he'd pulled himself from a thick sleep at the end of each work week for the past month in order to procure two gallons of Strawberry Swirl before taking his leave, his contribution to the night in the smallest of ways. 

A sticky note reminding his husband and daughter how much he loved them and would miss their ice cream-covered noses was left clinging to their frozen lids to be discovered in his absence.

The sweet, sticky remnants of the event were always long wiped up from both faces and countertops by the time that he would step, soft-footed and sure into the living room.

Elisa, eternally, curled up against the safety of Sonny's lean torso, her little fingers clutching to the light fabric that covered his wiry arms and chest as she slept; Sonny, nose buried deep in the give of her curls, palms large and safe as they perched on the small of her back -- it was all always enough to make Rafael's heart skip a beat.

Every breath from his chest, every hurried hand through his hair, every "goodnight" text that burned swollen at the back of his throat, unspoken, impersonal,  _not enough_ \--

That was what he did it for.

For those nights when he would pry Elisa from her cocoon of her daddy's limbs and find HGTV airing reruns of "Tiny House" across from them, because that's what Elisa had wanted to watch in preparation for the move.

For those nights when he would try and draw Sonny from sleep with words like, "sweetheart" and "love", with fingers through his hair and lips to his forehead, and promises of warm sheets and their bed.

For those moments when Sonny's eyelids would flutter open with the remains of sleep perpetually attached, all stickiness and prying eyelids, and Rafael would still lose his breath.

For moments like now, the present, with Elisa marching around a kitchen that wasn't theirs, babbling excitedly in the direction of a very-amused realtor about the brownstone's apparent abundance of "open space".

Anything for them.

Anything for their smiles.

Anything to keep Sonny's cheeks round, dimples apparent underneath Rafael's lips; anything to keep Elisa bright-eyed, and curious, and happy in every facet of her heart.

"Umm, Rosie? Does this brownstone come with stainless steel appliances?"

Elisa glanced up expectantly then, her gaze meeting that of three open-mouthed adults as she finished her cursory assessment of the bare countertops that lined the kitchen.

It was clear that she was just parroting, listing off the common requirements of every millennial twenty-something that appeared on the programs that ran regularly on the Home and Garden Network when she arrived home from school in the afternoons and viewed each one with her nanny.

But,  _God_ , if that didn't make the display any less adorable.

_Adorable_  -- it was a word that Rafael hadn't kept in his personal lexicon until Sonny, and Elisa, further along the line, but it was the only one that fit itself neatly to the pang between his ribs every time one of them did something particularly sweet.

And those hands, shelved patiently on a set of tiny hips, were the sweetest. 

"Baby, if we move here, we're gonna bring our own stuff," Sonny answered, a grin ever-present along the set of his jaw as he took in Elisa's quizzical expression. 

"But how's it gonna get here, daddy? We have like--like a _million bajillion_  things in our kitchen! We should just get new stuffs so we don't have to carry it all here," she said, tone matter-of-fact in the same way that it was whenever she explained to them both the inner workings of kindergarten classroom politics.

_("Daddies, Luis can't just decide that he gets to stand at the front of the line! That's my special job 'cause I was the quietest during silent time! He has to be more quieter next time if he wants his turn!")_

"Conejito," Rafael began, gesturing towards their little girl until her pink peacoat-clad form had moved to meet his, having already dropped to a knee against the kitchen's cool tile. "Do you remember how daddy and I told you that, when we move, we'll have to put all of your things into boxes? Your art supplies, your clothes, your special blanket--?"

"And my stuffies, too, daddy, don't forget about my stuffies!" Elisa cried, her fingers flying up to grasp desperately at the thick, woolen material of his coat where it laid heavily against his wrists. "You said you and daddy would poke holes in their boxes so they can breathe, 'member?!"

"Sí, sí, princesa, and of course daddy and I will," Rafael assured her, leaning down to nuzzle their noses together in her favorite of ways; like a bunny, with nose and eyes scrunched to match, so that the movement tickled and cast the unflappable EADA Barba in the silliest of lights.

A variation on the classic Barba-Carisi Eskimo kiss, however, and still, Elisa could not be swayed.

Her stuffies were serious business, he supposed.

"You pinky promised!" she reminded him sternly, breath hot against Rafael's cheek. She thrust a pinky forward then, almost knocking it into the set of his prominent nose in her haste for him to see the physical reminder of what he'd pledged.

No doubt would be left in her mind to linger -- wrapping the spindly length of his own around the smaller width of Elisa's, Rafael brought their joined pinkies to the pressure of his lips.

"Y nunca romperé la promesa del meñique, mi conejito hermoso," he murmured, his eyes firmly on hers reflecting across from him; green against green, and sparkling, now that the pads of her little fingers were being kissed.

Rafael blew a raspberry to them for good measure. 

"Papi!" she squealed, and withdrew her fingers from his playful grasp with a jerk, giggling delightedly as Rafael orchestrated a sneak attack that found another pressed swiftly to the baby soft skin of her cheek. "You're silly!"

_Silly_.

How had his heart ever felt before it had found itself swelling at the first sound of that word from his daughter's mouth?

His heart continued to pound out a steady rhythm of  _anything_  and  _everything_  in its presence.

"So, Elisa, do you maybe wanna come upstairs with me? That's where the bedrooms are, maybe we can plan out where to put your stuffies when they get here?"

Rosa cut a figure both long and lean as she stood adjacent to the jut of Elisa's left shoulder, her eyes kind and pencil skirt smoothed as she extended bony fingers in the direction of Elisa's freed hands.

"We'll let your dads stay down here and look around for a little bit. How does that sound?"

Eyes scanning wide, Elisa seemed to consider the spread of the brownstone's first floor before directing her attention and the bounce of her dark curls back on Rosa.

"I think I've seen all I need to down here, Rosie! Let's go find a place for my stuffies now!"

The realtor's grip replaced Rafael's own in Elisa's smaller one, their path quick to find the narrow set of stairs that separated the living room and kitchen.

He observed, and inevitably worried towards the thought of Elisa's tiny frame trekking the height of those stairs on its own -- Rosa would offer her continued support, he was certain, and Elisa would insist that she's a "big girl!", he knew from experience -- until the little girl in question turned her sweet-faced attention back to him. 

Scrunched up eyes, scrunched up cheeks, a smile that spanned the length from kitchen to living room and back -- the nose wiggle itself became more of a head spasm in Elisa's attempt, but Rafael felt the movement pang between the spaces of his ribs all the same.

He matched her grin, and returned the expression twofold, eyes closed and mouth puckered.

_Silly_.

_Anything and everything for her._

And then, she was off, up and onwards along the ascent of steps, her leather booties and the errant din of Rosa's heels beating out a steady, staccato rhythm that was -- unsurprisingly -- no match for the pitch of Elisa's excited babbling.

She  _was_  the daughter of Sonny Carisi, after all.

"Man, what am I, chopped liver? What's a guy gotta do to get a kiss around here?"

Rafael lingered, to tease; not until the pink of Elisa's coat had disappeared around the upper hallway's corner did he rise, and pivot, to find the softness of his husband's face.

"I dunno if I'm quite as cute as she is, but. I can sure try and make it worth your while."

Scoffing, Rafael dipped his head and approached the other man, fingers wrung deeply in his coat pockets as the clack of his shoes propelled him forward. 

Standing in front of him, Rafael's eyes and hands found Sonny's face.

It’s give, its feel, how cheekbones felt under such soft skin, and the way that Rafael's own thick fingers lined up and held them both in his warmth so completely; the heel of his palm tucked underneath the place where he'd kissed and memorized the misshapen lines that spoke of faded scars as he'd made love to Sonny so many years ago.

He'd memorized every facet, mapped out each and every dip and off-colored freckle burned into Sonny's skin from a childhood weekend too many spent on the golden coast that flanked Staten Island's shore; he knew Sonny's skin, the slope of his gorgeous, Italian nose, the sensitive spot behind behind each ear that favored finger and tongue as if they were simply extensions of Rafael's own body itself.

His blue eyes were Rafael's only continual journey.

Years of seeking them out among courtroom galleries, among hallways, throughout reporters, throughout witnesses, and victims alike, of finding Sonny, and finding them, and finding  _home_ , and he'd yet to discover the depth and full extension of their hue. 

As he fit his mouth around Sonny's lips, he reveled in the brightest ocean of blues.

_Cute?_

_As if you could ever be anything less than my entire world._

When he'd had his fill of Sonny's softness and pliant warmth, yielding to the changing press of his mouth, Rafael pulled back, and allowed hot words to gather across a sharp chin.

"Well, if you were as cute as our daughter, that would create quite the problem on my end. Those PTA moms, they'd try to snatch my trophy husband right out from under me. And I can't have that."

Rafael's eyes flickered upwards, and he caught Sonny sparkling -- eyes like sunlight reflecting off of glass, the aftershock of their kiss dusted high and rosy above dimpled skin. The corner of his lips quirked upwards, a self-contained smirk that Rafael felt himself proud of finding the space between his cheeks as he said, "They already try to do that now, Rafi."

Rafael bit down on his tongue, the steady vibrations against his chest evidence of the fact that Sonny knew he'd already won this round of their little back-and-forth game; almost ten years strong, and they were still evenly matched.

"Yes, well, stop baking them cookies before every meeting and maybe they wouldn't."

"Eh, honestly those meetings are just an excuse for me to make sure that you and Elisa have some," Sonny grinned, slim shoulders tugging upwards into a lazy shrug as a hand came up to run evenly through the trimmed tops of Rafael's hair. "'sides, I don't see you complaining about 'em when you're trying to sneak some off to your office."

Humming, Rafael simply agreed with what he could: "My trophy husband, indeed."

Those vibrations, those lovely tremors that began at breastbone and echoed down to Rafael's very core started up again at the title, and Rafael could only think to smile and look around towards the layout of the kitchen, for fear of being blinded by Sonny's light. 

"So," he began, gaze flickering heavily from joy to assessment, upper body gesturing absently towards the neutral-colored walls of the dining area behind them as he spoke, "how do you feel about this one? The kitchen's big enough, isn't it? I know you wanted for us to be able to host Thanksgiving every other year or so, so I tried--"

"Rafael," Sonny sighed.

"--to find something with an attached dining area to make the whole space seem bigger--"

"Rafael."

"--and it feels bigger, yes? I mean, comparatively to ours, it feels gargantuan, of course, but this one's felt the largest out of the four we've seen, so I just thought--"

" _Rafael_."

The inflection caused him to turn, eyes wide at the downtrodden set of Sonny's mouth.

"Can you stop killing yourself over this for like, five seconds, please?" 

Sonny's fingers on his shoulders were iron, digits locked into place like the steadfast rigidity that had found itself curled around the base of Rafael's spine as unspoken worries had met his tongue and slipped through the cracks of teeth.

"You know I don't--I don't care about any of this stuff, right? I don't care about how big our kitchen is, or--or about 'open space', or whatever the hell Elisa was talking about, or  _any of it_. I don't want a new home because, wow, it's bigger and nicer than our apartment. I want a new home because it'll be where I get to live out the rest of my years with my children and the man I love by my side."

He felt a ribbon of tension unfurl, dislodging itself from crevices hidden beneath skin before falling to the tile in front of Sonny's feet.

"You've just been so quiet today, love," he murmured, another section of spine sagging into the deep press of thumbs and the affection tallied in years at the corners of Sonny's eyes. "And while I'd like to think that the reason for that can simply be chalked up to your awe in my choice of 1960's brownstones, I know my Sonny better than that."

Sonny felt like liquid as he sighed, something melted down and warm that had his form draping heavily against Rafael's frame. The December cold that had lined the inside of his coat pockets is extinguished at first contact with Sonny's hips, at the puff of air against his forehead that smelled of sugar-laden, lukewarm coffee and toothpaste.

"You got me. It's not your impressive nose for real estate that's got me so...zoned out of everything."

"Can you tell your husband what it is that does then?" Rafael breathed, steeling himself with both foot and broad frame against the hysteria that had slowly begun to wet his tongue and seep once more into the hollows between bone and thick skin. " _Before_  he has an aneurysm, preferably."

Sonny's nose found temple, a solid weight of faint breaths and well-earned trust near the clean cut of Rafael's hairline; a reminder --  _his heart and our life together is promised, brownstone be damned_.

"It's stupid, Rafi, honestly, it's not even worth me bringing up--"

"Sonny,  _sweetheart_ , I'm far too old to be this close to the precipice of a heart attack, so if you don't just  _spit it out_ \--"

"I'm just gonna miss our old place, alright?"

Only the knot at the base of Rafael's skull released, muscles and tendons contracting through quicksand as he sought to find and frame the chin so urgently pressing into the meat of thick shoulder.

His palms remained empty, however, as hands discovered skin, Sonny's dimples unwilling to rise and meet the daily challenge of filling up their expanse; puckered lines at the corner flesh of lips was had instead, downtrodden to match the set of Sonny's eyes and wholly unnatural on such a sweet face.

"It's stupid, I know. I should be happy, right? Getting a fancy new house and actually having enough money to afford it, all 'cause my husband worked his ass off every single day for the past month so that we could."

"No, no, no, no," Rafael gathered thin fingers quickly, a pale wrist and its hidden, unyielding beat meeting the pressure of lips; he knew those fingers intimately, knew them by shape, and size, and stroke in the dark, by initials carved into the narrow, golden band that he enveloped next into the delicate heat of a kiss. "Sonny, love, look at me."

Guilt didn't settle well in Sonny's shade of blue, wasn't swallowed up and refracted off in waves that devoured rooms and hearts whole -- the expression didn't fill him, painted the sum of his form an image half-finished; joy and affection had lit his body from core out, and as Rafael held his cheek in strong hand, he renewed his vow to never allow Sonny to feel anything less.

"Sonny, you are my husband, my best friend.  _The whole of my heart_. Do you really think I'd be angry with you for...for  _feeling_? For being sentimental? Love, you teared up when we had to buy Elisa a new toothbrush after she dropped her first one in our toilet. How am I supposed to expect anything less from you?"

He chuckled, a soft, lilt of a thing, and finally it seemed as though the pieces of him were coming back together -- a half-worn smile now, and Rafael would worry about the lighting of blue eyes after.

"It's just...that apartment, Rafi. It holds everything. All of  _us_ , you know? Every single piece of you and me, from the very beginning. I mean, it's--it's where I cooked you dinner for the first time, it's where we made love and spent our first night together, it was our baby girl's first home, and I...I have a hard time letting it go when it was my first home, too."

Fingers still held in warm palm, he squeezed, and green eyes held steady and searched for the next sentiment to come rolling off the angular planes of Sonny's face -- speaking now wouldn't diminish the loss that Rafael was sure had lodged itself deep between breast; his husband had always felt  _so much_. 

"Sure, I had my place, where I didn't have to worry about leaving my dirty socks all over the floor without getting yelled at. But I would always take you yelling at me over that if it had meant another day where I didn't have to wake up without you. 

"I mean, I used to work doubles if it meant getting to see you for just a little longer during the day. And maybe that's just it, maybe I've just always felt most at home wherever you were. 'Cause I have a hard time believing it coincidence that when I finally found myself a home at SVU, I found you, too."

Would Sonny ever stop doing that?

Spinning words from heartstring until Rafael's own chest burned bright with the exertion?

Sonny had always worn vulnerability like a second skin, chest bare and halved for tendrils of doubt and uncertainty to snake and twist, through passageways of rounded rib, wrapping vine-like around tender muscle and flesh; constricting, holding tight like tendon to bone until he expanded his breast and allowed himself to breathe through the heady sensation once more.

His heart was exposed, open to pain and experiencing it in the most colorful of shades -- he felt love in the same vein, and wore it now, hot on his face like a brand.

But that was why they loved each other like they did: because their fingers were gentle, and only ever touched under the pretense of  _because_.

_Because I love you. Because I can tell that you're hurting. Because I like holding your hand. Because I like reminding myself that this is somehow real._

Rafael's hands returned to their favorite resting spot of cheek, and Sonny's smile spread slowly -- bashful, lashes curled downwards like silken flowers wilting underneath heavy rain -- only reaching its fullest length once he and Rafael's eyes had met.

_Because I could never be angry at you for feeling things the way that you do. Because I love you._

"We could always take pictures of the apartment, put them in your bedside drawer. Then you'd always have them near if you missed it," he suggested, only teasing by a meager sum; he'd procure an album dedicated to their bedroom carpeting if it would make the sun rise behind Sonny's eyes.

His husband shook his head, strands of dirty blond falling flat over forehead as the weekend-sized dollop of product he'd run through his thick mane in the half light of the morning lost its grip with the movement.

"Nah, you don't need to do all that. Maybe just--just be home for all the packing? I wanna have you there when we get to Elisa's room. To stop me from, like, trying to keep  _a_  baby sock that I find in the back of her closet or something."

Rafael couldn't truthfully say that the image didn't spark even a modicum of appeal within the synapses igniting brain, traveling along a highway of tissue as he stood, reveling in the clear-eyed honesty that Sonny bore -- puppy dog eyes and a pout would be a matching set at the inevitable find, and Rafael would end their search with a guilt far heavier on his shoulders than the throwing out of a once-worn sock should warrant.

For Sonny, though, he'd bear it straight-backed.

"Of course," he answered, concrete -- resolute. 

And Rafael continued to dig still deeper, low into the sentiment that now puckered Sonny's cheeks in broad valleys.

"Wherever we end up, though, together -- that'll be home. A different home, yes, but a home where we'll experience so many new things. Like bringing home our little boy for the first time, making a home for four instead of three. Maybe we can even make love against the counter in our new master bath, hmm? We never did that at the apartment."

A shock of blush erupted along the pathways of Sonny's cheekbones, and he squirmed, ducking head and shoulder and lithe neck as Rafael pressed errant lips to the color.

Dimples, expressive skin, and honest eyes -- his pieces had been found.

Fingers interlaced, figures aligned -- smiles, hips, and toes -- and golden bands had never felt like a newer adventure.

"Okay, Rafi. New home, new chapter. I'm ready."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back from another long hiatus, as I do!
> 
> This chapter was originally meant to include three more parts than it does. But, this first bit got away from me, so I decided to post it on it's own and include the next three sections as (most likely) their own individual chapters, too.
> 
> I hope you guys are still enjoying this story. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking with me even through these long-ass breaks in updating.
> 
> I love you all. Kudos and comments are always appreciated. <3


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